Many actors have played the famed monkey, including Donnie Yen who starred in 2014's The Monkey, Aaron Kwok in the upcoming The Monkey King 2, and Huang Bo in Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons.
Kwok, who spent up to eight hours a day putting on the monkey makeup, said, "There will be no regret for a Chinese actor if he can play the Monkey King at least once in his career."
But despite other portrayals of the monkey character, the Zhang family has had a firm grip on the role, with four generations of males specializing in it.
The family, from Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, practices the local version of Chinese opera. It caught the attention of top leaders including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai and secured a monopoly on the public imagination with the hit TV series in 1986.
Actors in other forms of traditional Chinese opera have also excelled in the role, now informally called "the monkey repertory".
Ghaffar Pourazar, an Englishman of Iranian descent, has done more than many to promote Peking Opera — and the monkey repertory in particular — to overseas audiences.
Some feel that Zhang has not been invited to the CCTV gala this year because, at 57, he is too old.
But that would be unusual for a show that has "thanks for the memory" appearances as a hallmark.
