The Silver River lute). The story is based on a 4,000-year-old Chinese folktale about the creation of Night and Day, a story of star-crossed lovers. "The Silver River" is the Chinese name for what is known in the West as the "Milky Way", the galaxy of the solar system. In Chinese tradition, the Silver River bathed heaven and earth in constant light and connected both realms, allowing earthly and celestial creatures to meet. The Jade Emperor, Lord of Heaven, dreams of a chaos that plunges heaven and earth into darkness. His nightmare comes true when the mortal Cowherd (also known as Buffalo Boy
Places in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the western spiral arm of the galaxy. It is home to a number of planets, including Earth and Rupert. Earth is "an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy". The sapient life-forms on Earth are, in descending order of intelligence, mice, dolphins and humans, the lattermost of whom may or may not be descended from a race of Golgafrinchan telephone-sanitisers, hairdressers, management consultants, and documentary film producers." These Golgafrinchans arrived in a space ark which crashed into the planet circa 2 mya, promptly christening