The story behind the Chinese idiom 一叶障目
This is an ancient joke.Long ago, there was a man who lived in poverty. He learned from a book that mantis usually use a leaf to hide themselves, causing making themselves invisible for hunting ants.
He was excited reading to read this since he had dreamed of making himself invisible, so, he ran to a tree and looked up, trying to find a leaf some mantis uses.was using. Fortunately, he found one and stretched out his arm to pick it up. However, by some mistakes, by chance the leaf fell on the ground and got mixed up with many others, making it impossible to find, so... making it unrecognisable*. he had to collect and bring all the fallen leaves home.
When he was at got home, in order to find out that the leaf with the mantis, he used held up each leaf one at a time to test it to see if he became invisible to his wife. to block his wife out of his sight**.
"Can you see me?" he asked repeatedly. "I can see you." at first his wife kept replying honestly. However, a day passed, and his wife got exhausted for by his endless questions. "I can't see you now!" she lied irritably. Hearing so this, the man felt on top of the world for he thought he had finally found it. He then dashed to a bazaar and covered his eyes with the leaf. Being confident to be that he was invisible, he stole goods while the owner was present! Unsurprisingly, he got caught and sent to a local court. The judge asked why he was doing things that something so stupid. He told about his logic and motivations.admitted his guilt and explained his actions and was then he got released because that the judge was so amused so hard by his stupidity.
* to make something/someone unrecognizable- to change the way something or someone looks so you do not even know what it is. For example, your friend loses 50 pounds, becomes a blond and gets plastic surgery, or someone gets beat up really badly, or the leaf caught fire and turned to ashes.
**to block something from your site is to make the actor not see, not the participant. So, to block his wife would mean he could not see her, rather than attempting to be invisible to her.
What a fantastic and engaging story!
Well written!!!!



