The story of buying pearls: During the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a businessman in Chu who specialized in selling jewelry. Once he went to Qi State to sell jewelry for business.

Well, in order to sell jewelry well, we specially made many small boxes out of precious wood, carved and decorated the boxes beautifully, so that the boxes would give off a fragrance, and then put the jewelry in the boxes. A man from Zheng saw the box containing the orb exquisite and beautiful. After asking the price, he bought one, opened the box, took out the treasure inside and gave it back to the jeweler.

People use this idiom to criticize Zheng for focusing only on appearance and neglecting essence, which made him make an inappropriate choice, giving up the main precious things and demanding the secondary bad things.