It’s no camel, but a monkey in a shopping mall’s courtyard seems to work just as well as far as begging goes. The monkey even did tricks, so how could you not give this guy money for that? Just imagine how this would’ve gone down in America. On a scale of one to Ferguson, how quickly would this guy have been down surrounded by security? But not here, because as usual, just about anything goes in the middle kingdom.

He’d just strolled through casually, turning heads as he’d walked up to people and prompted his monkey to give them a high five or do a handstand. This seemed to be working well too, because most of the people were handing him money without much hesitation. Was the monkey just that cute? Had they never seen one before? Or had he threatened to let the monkey loose on them if they didn’t give up some pocket change? I honestly couldn’t be sure how it went down, since whenever I attempted to get close enough to listen in or get a good photo, he’d gotten pretty aggressive. His monkey was probably camera shy. Honestly though, who brings a monkey to a mall and doesn’t expect to get photographed?! That’s sillier than using a monkey to get money.

Making friends

Sometimes people bring their monkeys to the Hong Kong border as well