According to the Chinese folklore, in the early Han Dynasty, the Emperor was visited by an emissary of the Da Yu country, who brought the sovereign the most unusual gift: a lion, which is a strong, regal beast that did not exist in the Empire.

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Along with said gift, the emissary offered the Emperor a challenge: to tame the lion and bend its will into doing anything it was ordered to do. The Emperor then laughed at the preposterous challenge, accepting it promptly, as it was obvious to him that in a country as big as his, clearly there would be someone that was fully capable of taming the beast.

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After summoning people that claimed to be capable of performing such feat, the Emperor ordered the first tamer to step forward. The man had the idea of not letting the lion eat until it was weakened due to starvation, thinking the lion would meekly obey while it was in such condition.

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   Alas, how wrong he sadly was, so much that he was eaten by the starved lion.

And so came the second man, with a complete opposite idea from the previous one, thinking that overfeeding the lion would make it a happy, obedient animal; and so he carried out the plan, stuffing the lion with food until the beast seemingly could not swallow any more food.

Also the second tamer was indeed mistaken, and such was proven when he attempted to tame the lion, getting eaten as well, despite having given the animal huge amounts of food.

Attempting to become successful where the two others failed, a third tamer stepped up. He thought of forcing the lion into obedience through sheer force, punishing the beast with a whip. Seeing that it would not give in to the tamer`s attempts, more people came to the tamer`s aid, but the now disproportional force used against the lion ended up killing it. When such happened, one of the royal messengers immediately went to the palace in order to report to the Emperor of the incident.

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   Angered, the Emperor ordered that the man was brought to his presence, eventually sentencing him to death.

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   Anguished, the tamer had an idea, and in the last moment he begged for his life, and the Emperor, who thought he had nothing to lose anymore, conceded the tamer three days to find a solution.

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   Aware of the situation, a spy of the Da Yu emissary reported to him, smiling triumphantly as he thought he now had the upper hand over the sovereign, and that he now only had to wait patiently as he was sure he had won the challenge.

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   As the condemned tamer had to act quick, he brought the lion`s corpse away from other people`s sights and skinned it. In order to make it look like the lion was obeying to every single of his commands, he asked two people for help, and they wore the lion`s skin.

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   Astonishingly so, the farce was approved by the emperor, and in the next day, with a huge arena full of people and enough distance so that the emissary`s sight couldn`t make it properly, he saw the presumed dead lion and couldn`t believe his own eyes, as he saw the lion alive, obeying the tamer`s orders, believing his own spy gave him a mistaken information. From then on, the Da Yu people vowed to trust the Emperor`s words unquestioningly, as he had beaten the challenge given by their emissary.