Once upon a time a group of students who had gathered for a night of drinking found they only had enough wine among them for one person. How could they fairly choose who would get the wine, they wondered. Then one of the students suggested a contest: whoever could draw a picture of a snake the fastest would get the wine. All agreed, and set to drawing.

Presently, one of the students finished drawing and looked around. Everyone else was still working. Pleased, he called out to the others that he was the first one to draw a snake and should receive the wine. The student then began to brag about his speed, remarking that the others were such slow artists by comparison that he had even had enough time to draw feet on his snake.

While the young man was boasting, a second student cried out that he was the first to finish drawing a snake and should be awarded the wine. When the first student protested, the second one replied, "Your picture has feet on it. Everyone knows that snakes don't have feet, so your drawing obviously is not that of a snake. I am the first one to have drawn a snake, so I should get the wine."

All the others agreed with the second student, and awarded him the wine. By adding feet to his drawing of a snake, the first student had ruined it, and thus lost the contest.

Thus the phrase "drawing a snake with feet" (hua she tian zu) came to mean "adding something superfluous that ruins the original effect."

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