I' d like to share with you an interesting historical event that happened in Xia Dynasty. It’s a story in our history textbook about a stupid king whose name I couldn’t remember exactly. Anyway, this king married a queen who was drop-dead gorgeous, however, there’s one thing that really bugged him, and that is, his queen hardly ever smiled, and that’s how she got the nickname ‘ice queen’. The King racked his brains trying to find a way to make her smile, but failed every time. He even promised that anyone who could put a smile on the queen’s face would get a thousand boxes of gold. 

One day, someone at the court suggested that the king could light the warning beacons that are normally used to summon armies from surrounding states in times of danger. He explained, the queen must find it hilarious when the nobles arrived and realized they got played. The king thought he had a point, so he took the advice. And the guy was right. The queen did burst out laughing when she saw the nobles hurry to the court only to find that it was a false alarm. If you ask me, the king was so out of line, and the worst part is, he did the same thing several times to please his queen, and finally lost the trust of the nobles. When he was actually in danger, no one came to his rescue.

So you see, it’s kind of a funny and sad history story, and somehow it’s usually told as a cautionary tale of how one beauty can topple a country, which I think is so not fair.