Celestial rebel with the golden gaze

Zodiac year or not, Monkey King rules with his antics

There is no better embodiment of the power and appeal of 2016's zodiac animal than Sun Wukong, also known as the Monkey King.

The protagonist in China's greatest fantasy novel, Sun was born out of a magic stone that sat atop a mountain and gathered the powers of heaven and earth since time immemorial. In real life, Wu Cheng'en's creation in Journey to the West may have been inspired by the Hindu deity of Hanuman from the Ramayana, who is a monkey, or vanara, who took part in a war against a demon king, or by Shi Banto, the first disciple of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) monk Xuanzang, or a fusion of these and various Chinese folklores.