ABSTRACT
Many centuries ago an ape king lived a blissful existence in the remote regions of that great silver river in the sky, the Milky Way. We do not know how long his residence in that paradise lasted or how he enjoyed himself in that blessed realm, but one evening on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month he made the unpardonable error of secretly peering at the Weaving Girl and the Herding Boy, when those two immortal lovers had their sole meeting of the year after ferrying across the great river on a bridge formed from ravens. 1 Even in those days privacy (especially the privacy of fairies!) was to be respected and the two lovers instantly condemned the mischievous ape to exile in the world of mortals, where he was to be born into a family surnamed Yuan 袁, since the Chinese word for ape (yuan 猿) has exactly the same sound. 2
