At first I did not understand this folk tale at all. I cannot trace its origin, though there are many tellings on the web, so I will add another version, which is of course a lie from beginning to end.
In the days of the Ming, after the barbarian invaders lost the Mandate of Heaven, in the twenty-third year of the Hongwu Emperor, there lived an artist named Lao Yuxi. Lao had studied with the nameless masters in Fujian, but now he lived alone in Suzhou, on the shore of Lake Tai, near the canals. There he cooked xiaolong bao for himself, and painted, speaking to few. In his garden he cultivated the fragrant suzi plant which gives Suzhou its name, which is called सिलाम or silam. Once a year he made the long trek across the enormous, ancient city to the tall stone Yunyan Temple on top of Tiger Hill, which was not as tall in those days, but had already begun to lean. The painter Lao was said to be a greater painter than the Hanlin Yuan painters, greater even than Shangguan Boda’s painters at the Palace of Virtue and Knowledge, who wore the golden girdle — even though the painter Lao did not have to pay a fine for each error in his paintings.
The Hongwu Emperor aspired to restore the artistic glory the Song had achieved before the barbarian invasion. That summer, when the magnolias were in bloom, hearing of the painter Lao, he called him to his court at the Capital of the South (which is pronounced “Nanjing” in Chinese) and commissioned him to paint a cock crowing at dawn. Lao took a fortune in gold and bronze back to his home in Suzhou, on the shore of Lake Tai, near the canals, where he painted.
A month later, the Hongwu Emperor sent for the painting of the cock, but the painter Lao was eating xiaolong bao, which burst in your mouth when you bite them. He sent back word that the painting was not done yet. So the Emperor waited.
Summer gave way to autumn, and when the tree limbs were bare against the sky, again the Hongwu Emperor sent for the painting of the cock. The painter Lao was weeding among the fragrant suzi in his garden, and he sent back word that the painting was not done yet. So, still, the Emperor waited.
Autumn became winter and then spring, and in the summer, when the lotus began to bloom, the mighty Hongwu Emperor sent for the painting of the cock a third time. When the Emperor’s messenger arrived at the house of the painter Lao in Suzhou, on the shore of Lake Tai, near the canals, Lao was not there. The messenger waited impatiently until it was dark, and finally the painter Lao returned from the tall stone Yunyan Temple on top of Tiger Hill. He gave the hungry messenger xiaolong bao, which burst in his mouth when he bit it. But, again, the painter Lao sent back word that the painting was not done yet. The Emperor knew patience from his days as a monk, and he knew the value of mercy from the years he had wandered as a beggar, and so, still, the Hongwu Emperor waited.
That autumn, the leaves turned yellow and orange, then deep red. The Hongwu Emperor had given the land of many nobles to peasants, and those nobles went to speak with the general Lan Yu, the Emperor’s oldest friend, the personal tutor of the Crown Prince. When the Hongwu Emperor found ten thousand of the finest Japanese swords secreted in Lan’s house in Anhui, he knew Lan had betrayed him, so he put to death his oldest friend, Lan Yu. Then, the Emperor put to death fifteen thousand more men the Embroidered Uniform Guard said were loyal to Lan.
But the painter Lao was at his house in Suzhou, on the shore of Lake Tai, near the canals. He cooked xiaolong bao for himself, and they burst in his mouth when he bit them.
That spring, when the mimosas bloomed, the Hongwu Emperor punished the Embroidered Uniform Guard for abusing their authority during the investigation. Times were very difficult. The Emperor put to death tens of thousands more people, including three of his favorite concubines.
It was two more years before the Hongwu Emperor paid attention to artistic matters, and then he was furious. He did not want to wait any longer. He went to the house of the painter Lao in Suzhou, on the shore of Lake Tai, near the canals. As the sun set over Lake Tai, he burst through Lao’s door and demanded the painting he had paid such a fortune for.
The painter Lao put down his plate of xiaolong bao. He picked up his brush and his inkstone, and with a few deft strokes, he created the most beautiful painting of a cock the Hongwu Emperor had ever seen, so lifelike it was impossible to believe human hands had painted it. Not a single brushstroke was wasted, and the cock looked ready to walk off the paper and peck the Hongwu Emperor. Somehow the dawn in the painting seemed to glow. The Emperor felt he could not breathe when the painter Lao handed him the painting.
But this evidence of the incomparable excellence of the painter Lao did not appease the Hongwu Emperor. After he recovered from his astonishment, he was angrier than before. “You have kept me waiting three years while you ate xiaolong bao,” he roared, “for a painting you could paint in twenty minutes?” His bodyguard stirred uneasily outside the door in his embroidered uniform.
The painter Lao showed no fear and spoke no word. He slid open his closet door. Ten thousand paintings of cocks avalanched onto the floor. Many of them were terrible, even ridiculous. Some were good. But the best painting of all was the one in the Emperor’s hand.
The Hongwu Emperor was ashamed. Silent, he left with the twenty-minute painting on which the painter Lao had spent three years of his life, and he returned to Nanjing. For the rest of his life the painting was his most precious possession.