In the last years of the Qin dynasty, the chancellor Zhao Gao wanted to seize power but feared that the ministers would not follow him. He set a test. He brought a deer to the Second Emperor and said: “It is a horse.” The emperor laughed. “Is the chancellor mistaken? He calls a deer a horse.” He asked the people around him.
“Some of those around him were silent. Some said horse, to please Zhao Gao.” (左右或默，或言马以阿顺赵高) Zhao Gao had those who said deer secretly charged under the law. “After that, all the ministers feared Zhao Gao.” (Records of the Grand Historian) The idiom zhi lu wei ma (指鹿为马), to point at a deer and call it a horse, comes from this story.