Original Text
The kingdom of Siam once sent a lion as tribute, and whenever the procession halted along the way, crowds gathered to watch like a wall of people. The lion's appearance was utterly unlike the embroidered or painted images commonly seen in the world; its fur was black and yellow, several inches long. Someone threw a chicken to it, and the lion first seized the chicken with its claws, rolling it into a ball, then blew upon it with its mouth; with a single breath, all the chicken's feathers fell clean away—a truly strange and curious phenomenon.
Commentary
This is a tale recorded by Pu Songling concerning the tribute lion from Siam.
What does a lion look like? Pu Songling had never seen one. What did the tribute lion from Siam look like? Naturally, Pu Songling had never seen that either. Interestingly, Pu Songling did not compare the Siamese tribute lion with an actual lion, but rather contrasted it with the image passed down in embroidered paintings, thus arriving at a conclusion based on hearsay. He Yin, a commentator on Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, jested about this: "Thus I have heard it said, the description of the lion's form is roughly the same as this."