Consort Liu plotted with eunuch Guo Huai to secretly swap the infant with a skinned Chinese wild cat.
Outraged by the "monster baby" and believing her cursed, Emperor Zhenzong demoted Consort Li to the forbidden palace.
Several years later, as an old blind woman in a poor village, she found the opportunity to tell the story to the good official Bao Zheng.
[7][8][9] According to Wilt Idema, Chinese scholars classify the tale as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index.
[10] According to Sinologists Idema and Boris L. Riftin [ru], the tale is very popular in China, both as a folkloric account and a literary work.
[14] In a tale collected from a Chinese-American source from California, titled The Long Lost Mother, a king is childless, but his queen promises him a boy.
While the emperor is away, she gives birth to the prince, but evil courtiers plot against her: they place a skinned cat in the baby's cradle and cast the boy in the water in a box.
when the emperor returns, he sees the animal instead of a human child, and exiles the empress from the palace, while the baby prince is rescued and raised by a fisherman.