The original intention of buying bamboo slips and pearls is to buy a wooden box with pearls to return. It is a metaphor that the buyer chooses improperly, and the secondary things are better than the main ones. Buying gifts and returning pearls is a derogatory term, and similar words are: putting the cart before the horse, putting the cart before the horse, negative salary, putting the cart before the horse, and improper choice.
Idiom explanation:
Rafters: wooden cases; Pearl: Pearl. Bought a box of pearls; But I returned the pearls in the box. Metaphor has no vision; Improper choice. [2]
Idiom origin:
In the Warring States Period, Han Feizi's "On the Left of Han Feizi's Foreign Reserve": "Chu people sold their pearls to Zheng, which were the cabinets of Mulan, preserved with cinnamon, decorated with pearls and jade, decorated with roses, and decorated with feathers and breastplates. Zheng people buy rafters and return pearls. "
Source translation
There was a businessman in the State of Chu who sold jewelry in the State of Zheng. He carved a pearl box with precious Mulan, smoked it with spices made of cinnamon, and decorated it with jewels and jadeite. A man from Zheng bought this box, but returned the beads in it to him. It can be said that this jeweler is good at selling boxes, but not at selling jewelry!
Enlightenment and appreciation
1, people's eyes only stare at the beautiful box, but they lose the really valuable orb. It can be seen that everything must have priorities, otherwise it will be like the Zheng people who "buy gifts and return pearls" to make stupid things such as giving up the basics and making improper choices.
2. Businessmen pay too much attention to appearance, so that the value of decorative appearance is higher than that of beads. It can be used to describe that some manufacturers over-decorate their appearance in order to gain benefits, making the value of appearance higher than the value of goods, thus raising the price of goods a lot.
Modernity is also used to describe how to spend a lot of capital to get less return, and a seller of rafters gets a "pearl" with a "rafter".
4. describe people as short-sighted and improper in choice.
Beauty can be created, but the real beauty should not be artificially carved. It should be a flower blooming on real fertile soil! ! If something is really beautiful, then it doesn't need any outside help to set it off.
6, don't care too much about appearance, the essence is the most important.