What's a Hairy Monkey?

Is a hairy monkey just what the sentence say's it is?  Is it a ritual of some kind whose origin is long lost to the annals of history? Perhaps it's a drink created by some drunken bar tender on holiday from university?  Or maybe its an art genre practiced only in China.

Beijing — Of all the curiosities one can find in China, few are more bizarre than “hairy monkeys.”
These are not real monkeys. They are tiny humanoid figures made from furry magnolia buds and sloughed off cicada shells, and if that sounds unlikely, you should see what their creators have them do.
Not that many such creators still exist. There are probably fewer than a dozen folk artists in Beijing practicing this abstruse traditional skill, constructing exquisitely modeled tableau that illustrate scenes from old Beijing life.

 They do it by taking magnolia buds gathered in early spring, when they are covered with a fluffy down, and attaching the heads and legs of cicada carapaces – resembling minuscule lobster claws – which the insects shed in high summer and leave on the trunks of the trees in which they live.