I believe everyone has heard the story of buying bamboo slips and returning pearls. I also learned it at school. But I haven't heard this idiom for a long time. I believe many people have to recall it carefully if they want to tell the meaning and story immediately. Let's briefly and in detail recall what the story of buying bamboo slips and returning pearls mainly tells.

What do you mean, buy bamboo slips and pearls?

Refers to the wooden box that has been returned after buying pearls; The metaphor is improper choice, and the secondary things are better than the main ones. As predicate, object and attribute in a sentence; Used in written language

Origin of idioms

Some Chu people sold their pearls to Zheng, that is, Mulan bamboo slips, cinnamon incense, pearl Yu Pei, Rose Yu Pei and Feather Yu Pei. Zheng Guoren bought the jewelry box and returned the pearls. This can be said to be a best seller, but it is not a good pearl. The talk in this world is all about arguing about words, and people forget to use them. (Han Feizi in the Warring States Period "Han Feizi, Foreign Storage, Upper Left")

Later generations refined the idiom "buy gifts and return pearls"

Detailed content

0 1. During the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a businessman in the State of Chu who specialized in selling jewelry. On one occasion, he went to Qi State to sell jewelry. For the sake of good business and best-selling jewelry, he specially made many small boxes with precious wood, which were beautifully carved and decorated, so that the boxes would give off a fragrance, and then put the jewelry in the boxes.

02. A man from Zheng saw that the box containing the orb was 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.

03. The moral of buying gifts and returning pearls is to tell us to distinguish priorities and not to confuse them. Don't pay too much attention to the appearance and ignore the essence of things.

Written usage

As predicate, object and attribute in a sentence; Used in written language.

From the perspective of modern management, "buying gifts and returning pearls" can be used to refer to the fraudulent behavior that some bureaucrats are used to deceiving superiors and subordinates or the public with formalism.

Use examples

Song Cheng Yi's "Notes to Fang": "There are many people who have studied Confucian classics today, and the disadvantages of buying bamboo slips and returning pearls are all there."

Bird Yang Hao's "Selected Poems from Trang Van's Reading Poems": "If I had known a good piano would make a fool of myself, every smile would be rewarded for buying the wrong one."

Liang Ting's "On Vernacular Writing as the Foundation of Reform" in the Qing Dynasty: "Those who are not good at reading are ignorant of elites and pity the dross. What are the benefits of buying bamboo slips and pearls? If it were in the vernacular, there would never be this disease.

The above briefly introduces the story of buying gifts and returning pearls. Did it help you find the memory of this story after reading it?