“Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den”

Chinese-American linguist Yuen Ren Chao composed this passage in classical Chinese; when read in modern Mandarin, every syllable has the sound “shi,” with only the tones differing.

In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

Aaron Posehn gives an explanation, including the full text in Chinese, here.

(Thanks, Brad.)