To take the packaging and miss the point
The gap between those first two lines is the whole point of a chengyu. It is quoted whole, never assembled, and the literal reading is a picture from the story below rather than a definition — which is why translating the four characters one at a time rarely gets you there.
A jeweller of Chu sold a pearl in a magnolia-wood box, perfumed, inlaid with jade and kingfisher feathers. His customer paid, kept the box and handed the pearl back. He knew how to sell a case, said Han Feizi, not how to sell a pearl.
Source: 《韩非子》Han Feizi, 3rd century BC
The reading shown is the one each character takes inside this idiom — chengyu keep older readings, so it is not always the everyday one. The meanings are read from the same dictionary that powers the translators.
Want the stroke order for one of these? Each character links to its dictionary entry, which animates it.
买椟还珠 is pronounced mǎi dú huán zhū and means to take the packaging and miss the point. Literally it says "buy the casket, give back the pearl" — like most chengyu, the literal reading is a picture from a story rather than a definition.
《韩非子》Han Feizi, 3rd century BC. A jeweller of Chu sold a pearl in a magnolia-wood box, perfumed, inlaid with jade and kingfisher feathers. His customer paid, kept the box and handed the pearl back. He knew how to sell a case, said Han Feizi, not how to sell a pearl.
mǎi dú huán zhū. Press the audio button on this page to hear it spoken by a native voice. Tones here are citation tones, so 一 is written yī even where it is said yí in running speech.
买 (mǎi) Buy (business), 还 (huán) Also (still - even); Return (repay - retaliate), 珠 (zhū) Bead (pearl). These meanings come from the same dictionary as the translators on this site, and the reading shown is the one the character takes inside this idiom.
Yes. Chengyu are not archaic — they are ordinary educated speech, and they turn up in conversation, newspapers and exams. This one sits in the intermediate band, which reflects how common it is and how hard its characters are.
Rebuild 买椟还珠 from scrambled tiles in the Chengyu Story Puzzle, test yourself on idiom meanings in the Chengyu Quiz, browse all the idioms, or save this one above and review it on your review deck.
Every idiom here comes with the story it was compressed from — that is the rule for being listed, and it is why they stick.
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