There once was a chicken farmer who lived in a small village in China. One year, all of his chickens were afflicted with a strange blight that caused them to lose their feathers.
The farmer was deeply concerned about this, because winter was coming, and, if the chickens had no feathers, they would freeze to death. So, the farmer decided to consult the two wisest men in the land.
First, he visited Mr. Ching, the renowned scholar. Mr. Ching leafed through all his agricultural and medicinal texts and poured over books and scrolls well into the night. Finally, he returned to the farmer and told him that if
he crushed the leaves of a gum tree into powder, made it into tea, and fed it to his chickens, they would be cured.
The farmer then went to Mr. Ming, the great seer. Mr. Ming cast stones, read tea leaves, and poked through entrails until finally he came up with the answer: "Tea made from gum leaves will cause feathers to stick to chicken."
Now the farmer was ecstatic. The two wisest men in the land had given him exactly the same prescription, so, as soon as he returned home, he took some gum leaves and made tea from them. He mixed this with the chicken feed and fed it to his chickens.
But it didn't work. The chickens continued to lose their feathers, and, with the onset of winter, they all froze. The moral of this story:
"All of Ching's courses and all of Ming's ken, couldn't get gum tea to feather a hen!"
