The origin of the Warring States Period, Han Feizi's "On Han Feizi's Left External Storage"
Later generations refined the idiom "buy bamboo slips and return pearls", which means to return the wooden box that bought 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.
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.
Extended data:
Han Feizi's original intention is not as stated in the above explanation. Judging from the content of "everything is wrong, the foreign reserves say left", Chu's pearl merchants spent so much money and energy to beautify the pearl boxes that Zheng's customers bought beautiful boxes instead of the pearls he wanted to sell. Han Feizi criticized Chu people for "selling bamboo slips but not pearls", but did not accuse Zheng people of "buying bamboo slips and returning pearls" at all.
However, the current idioms and their definitions have turned the criticism of Chu people's pearls in the original book into the criticism of Zheng people's buying pearls and returning them. Inverted the original meaning that everything is wrong. See what Han Feizi allegorized with this story (and the story of Bai Qin marrying his daughter).
The original works criticized the pragmatism of scholars with grandiose arguments, but did not accuse readers of appreciating the literary talent of their poems. However, the current idioms and their definitions have turned the original criticism of scholars' writings into criticism of the audience's improper choice, which is obviously completely contrary to the original intention.