Chinese Æsop:

A bored shepherd boy  entertained himself by tricking nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock of sheep. When they came to his rescue, they found that the alarms were false and that they had wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock, and in some versions the boy. ( The Chinese Equivalent for "Never Cry Wolf" ) Similarly, in Ancient China, a king tried to entertain his melancholy queen by lighting  beacon fire to trick his soldiers. Below is another version of this story by Du Halde: This prince [Yeou vang] had none of the good qualities which were admired in his father, but had very great faults, which made him contemptible to his people. He was desperately in love with a concubine called pao ssee, for whose sake he put away the empress and her son, who was the lawful heir to the crown, in order to put in his place the son which he had by his co...

Li vang, the Tenth Emperor, reigned 51 Years. This tyrant king of Zhou was proud, self conceited, prodigal and cruel ; the wealth of his subjects, which he drew from them through exaction, could scarcely satisfy his passion for riches, which he spent lavishly and without judgment : The misery of his subjects was extreme, and nothing was heard but complaints and murmurs. These clamours and repinings of an oppressed People only increased his fury, and he punished, with the utmost severity, those whom he suspected to be at the head of the malecontents. As he was conscious how odious he had made himself to his subjects, he suspected that all their discourse was on his ill conduct, and therefore he forbid them, on pain of death to converse together, or even whisper to one another, so that you might see all the inhabitants walking the streets with eyes cast down, in mournful silence, and shunning each other. Tchao kong, one of his most faithful ministers, frequently advised him to ...

There was once a woman who never smiled. Her name was Bao Si and she was a concubine to King You of the Western Zhou dynasty, which flourished in China after 1000 BCE. The King neglected the affairs of government for the sake of the company of this beautiful but melancholy  concubine. He wanted so much to see her smile that he scoured the kingdom for entertainers and performing animals; not a flicker of amusement crossed her face. One day, Bao Si was watching her maids doing needle-works, one of the maids accidentally torn apart a piece of silk, King You noticed a twitch of her lips and a flicker of smile on her face, and asked if she like the sound of tearing silks. Bao Si said she loved the sound of rent silk. Then the King immediately ordered that many thousands of fine pieces of silk were torn to shreds to gratify her whim. But this couldn't make laugh either. The king offered a thousand ounces of gold to any one who would make her laugh; whereupon his ch...