Literal Meaning: A leaf before eyes shuts out Mt. Taishan.

Metaphorical Meaning: to have one’s view of the important overshadowed by the trivial

Once upon a time, there was a bookworm in the State of Chu. His family was very poor.

One day, he read a book, saying that the mantis used a leaf to hide itself when hunting the cicada and if someone could get this leaf, he would also be invisible. He thought: “What if I get this leaf!”

From then on, he spent his days in walking in the woods, searching for the leaf which the mantis used to hide itself. Finally, he saw a mantis hunting a cicada under the cover of a leaf. He was overjoyed and dashed at the leaf. However, he was so excited that he failed to catch the leaf, which fell into a heap of leafs on the ground and could not be found any more.

He thought for a while. Then he took a dustpan, swept the entire heap of leafs into it and brought the dustpan back home. At home, he thought: “How can I pick out the leaf which can make me invisible from those leafs?”

Then he made a decision that he should try every leaf. He picked up a leaf, put it before his eye and asked his wife: “Can you see me now?”

“Yes, I can,” replied his wife.

Then he picked up another leaf and asked: “Can you see me now?”

“Yes, I can,” his wife replied patiently.

He kept on trying and finally made his wife impatient. So when he picked up a leaf and asked her the same question, she answered: “No, I can’t see you now.”

The bookworm was so happy that he went to the street with the leaf. He entered a store, put the leaf before one of his eyes and took away one thing from the store just in front of the store owner.

The store owner couldn’t believe what he saw. He caught the bookworm and sent him to the yamen (a government office in ancient China). The governor felt very strange because this guy dared to steal things in the public at day. He asked why and the bookworm told the reason. The governor felt funny and thought the bookworm was an idiot. So he let him go without punishing him.

Mao Zedong, the first Chairman of PRC quoted this story and wrote the sentence “a leaf before eyes shuts out the whole Mt. Taishan” in one of his articles.