Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #13 Buying the Case but Returning the Pearl (买椟还珠)

To go too far in the pursuit of form brings about opposite results.

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This article is one of the “Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals” series.

Story

In the past, a man intended to go to the State of Zheng to sell pearls.

First, he used rare lily magnolia to make a small exquisite case which he fumigated with the delicate fragrance of osmanthuses and Chinese prickly ashes. Furthermore, the case was inlaid with emerald-green jadeite and adorned with an attractive rosy jade. The whole case was decorated in an extremely exquisite way.

A man of the State of Zheng saw this exquisite case and liked it very much. He bought it with a great deal of money, but he returned the pearl inside the case to the seller.

Later, people ridiculed the seller by saying that he was good at selling cases, but not good at selling pearls.

Meaning

This idiom has two meanings:

1. The seller went too far in the pursuit of presentation

2. The buyer didn’t realize the core value

Examples in Software Development

Quite often, management and engineers in the software industry focus on the wrong thing.