China and the Monkey King

In western culture, the monkey is a mischevious and entertaining creature. It's a crowd favorite at zoos, performs as a popular circus animal, and occasionally accompanies pirates on adventures overseas. But in China, the monkey has revered status befitting its place as one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac.

Throughout modern tales in the West, a monkey's appearance spells nothing but trouble, whether it's as a Nazi sympathizer in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or one of the chimps in the CareerBuilder.com TV ads. You don't want to have a monkey around when there's serious work to be done.

Don't tell that to the Chinese. They'll simply refer you to one of the most beloved characters in their literature, Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King.

Sun Wukong's legend includes a lot of things, like being born from solid rock, developing mysterious powers like shapeshifting, jumping from cloud to cloud, consorting with demons, getting himself kicked out of heaven, and being thrown in prison for 500 years. But the biggest part of the Monkey King's story happened after he was released from stir. He donned a fashionable headband and joined a trio of other nefarious characters, accompanying an earthly monk on what is known as the Journey to the West, a tale that is acclaimed as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature. That journey is what powers the Monkey King's ongoing popularity in movies, TV shows, operas, and more in China.

Back in the West, the most-recognized image of a primate-in-charge comes from the ultraviolent Planet of the Apes film series of the late 1960s and early 1970s. A recent re-imagining called Rise of the Apes attributes a simian takeover of human civilization to some wimpy pandemic. But in the original movies, the apes acquire the world by brute force. This is much better. An Apes movie is not respectable unless it includes scenes of primates on the march carrying and using automatic weapons against humans.

Compare the character of Ceasar of Apes fame to Sun Wukong's Monkey King and you've got quite a contrast. My Chinese friends say the Monkey King is "a kind, generous, and charming character. Everyone knows this."

I tell them that I had never heard of the Monkey King before I arrived in China, and that I rather prefer Ceasar, anyway. He leads apes on a killing spree in 1970's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and has no qualms about world domination. At the end of the movie, he gives quite a powerful speech, foretelling regime change from man to ape with the line, "...we will found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty, and that day is upon you NOW!"

Such a forceful attitude is unthinkable to the generations of Chinese who have grown up with the adventures of Sun Wukong. Even Chairman Mao imagined himself as having some of the attributes of the Monkey King, although he enacted policy more in the spirit of Ceasar. But that's okay, because I think even the most loyal Chinese would have a hard time imagining the Great Helmsman wearing a golden headband and flying around on clouds.