Zhu Baba of the Great Ming Dynasty

Zhu Baba, a butcher's apprentice in Nanjing, is forced to change his name because it matches the emperor's. But with a few “masterful moves,” he turns the whole world upside down in the third year of the Hongwu reign. He is helping a neighbor write a letter home when he accidentally changes “The emperor is wise” to “The emperor's surname is Shen.” The Embroidered Guard chases him through the streets, and in his panic he dives into a gift box, only to crash into the dragon throne in the Golden Throne Hall. To save his life, he claims he can “turn stones into gold,” fooling the entire court with fake gold bricks coated in yellow mud. The accountant Qian Chuanzi shows up to ride the wave of attention, but turns the imperial kitchen into a slop pit. Li Cuilian, the tofu beauty, storms the palace with her tofu stall, knocks out guards with tofu, and even uses the empress's phoenix crown as a millstone. When Zhu Yuanzhang's bird's nest soup is replaced with dishwater, and the “gold bricks” dissolve into lumps of mud in the rain, this commoner, who calls memorials “complaint letters,” becomes the “Comical Marquis” the emperor thinks about every day. See how these three oddballs turn mishaps into an absurd legend that even Zhu Yuanzhang can't stop laughing at in the harshly law-bound Hongwu era. After all, compared with the fake respectability of corrupt officials, the honest foolery of ordinary people is much more appealing.