AI fail: even if you don't know any Chinese, I bet you know this idiom, and contrary to what Quora's assistant bot says, it doesn't mean "benefiting from the hard work of others"!
瓜田李下 guātiánlǐxià means, "Don't tie your shoes in a melon field, and don't adjust your hat under a plum tree." In other words, if you don't want to attract suspicion, don't act suspiciously. I do wonder where the bot got its erroneous idea from.
Source: https://www.quora.com/What-was-a-Chinese-idiom-that-you-heard-for-the-first-time-recently
The idiom on Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%93%9C%E7%94%B0%E6%9D%8E%E4%B8%8B
By the way, this chengyu is from a poem credited to Cao Zhi in the Warring States period, which is wild to me because it feels very modern.
Translation by Robert Joe Cutter, from The Poetry of Cao Zhi, available as open access from De Gruyter (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501507038/html)... have to say, though, that copying and pasting from both the HTML and PDF versions is a non-functional mess. I don't think either will be screen-reader appropriate. :(
@villainousfriend Huh!
What does "merge with the brilliant to obtain its handle" mean? Is it something like "surround yourself with excellence"?
Also curious about why an elder person and a younger can't be side by side... I guess... accusations of sexual impropriety? But the idea that multiple generations can't work together or be friends DOES feel very modern...
@bloodripelives you know, I have no idea what that means. Maybe accusations of sexual impropriety? Or of lacking respect for elders?
The bit that confuses me most is the Duke of Zhou spitting out his food. If you have no time to eat, shouldn't you at least swallow the bite you already took? Unless you're about to go on a rollercoaster (or a fast ride to the next house), maybe.
@villainousfriend @bloodripelives I think it might be literal, too - like how a wife can't be physically right next to her husband but has to walk a few steps behind him, or like a person of a younger generation can't sit next to the patriarch/matriarch of a family but either sit perpendicular or stand