Kam Ying is still coming to terms with the death of her master, 'Monkey Man' Chan Yat-biu. 'She stares at my father's empty bed and at the door, sometimes scratching it with her hands as though she thinks he is coming back,' said Mr Chan's son, Chan Yiu-wing. Herbal medicine hawker Chan Yat-biu, who won a court case in 2000 to keep the eight-year-old rhesus macaque, died on Saturday, aged 94. Now his son is uncertain if he will be able to keep the monkey as he is unable to inherit the special licence his father obtained to care for the pet. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, which confiscated the animal four years ago but had to give it back after the court case, said it would follow up in the next two days. 'The licence was offered to Mr Chan [senior] under exceptional circumstances and it cannot be transferred,' a spokesman said. 'I want to keep her ... and continue my father's work to help people with our medicine,' said Chan Yiu-wing, 51, who lived with his father in their Kowloon City home. He has already contacted legislator Albert Ho Chun-yan, who helped his father keep Kam Ying. The elder Chan, who was given the monkey by friends, trained it to entertain people while marketing his homemade medicine. The confiscation sparked a public controversy in which 10,000 people signed a petition for the monkey's return. With the help of Mr Ho, they successfully sought a judicial review in which the court ruled the monkey must be returned on humanitarian grounds because its owner was so attached to it. The man and his pet became celebrities, doing television commercials. Wong Che-lok, a conservation officer said the monkey could not be returned to the wild as it might fail to adapt and be rejected by other monkeys. If taken away it will probably go to the Kadoorie Farm, home to the Yuen Long crocodile.
