The Guilty Chinese Scholartree, a specimen of Pagoda Tree (Styphnolobium japonicum) located in Beijing's Jingshan park, is a famous tree and national landmark on which the last Ming emperor Chongzhen hanged himself after a group of peasants (led by Li Zicheng) successfully stormed the Forbidden City.
The tree was uprooted during the Cultural Revolution and the present one that stands in its place is a replica.
It was during this era that Zhu Yuanzhang led a peasant revolution that was instrumental in expelling the Yuan Dynasty and forcing the Mongolians to retreat to the Mongolian steppes.
That explains why the Chinese dragon has the body of a snake; the scales and tail of a fish, the antlers of a deer, the face of a qilin (a deer-like mythical creature with fire all over its body), two pairs of eagle talons, and the eyes of a tiger-lion.
Chinese legends places this occurrence in 2737 BCE, and states that leaves from burning tea twigs blew upwards from the fire and landed in his cauldron of boiling water (Jane Reynolds, Phil Gates, and Gaden Robinson (1994).
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