To exhaust one's limited abilities or tricks; to run out of ideas or stratagems, especially when facing a difficult situation; to reveal the extent of one's meager talents.
Era:
Ancient
Frequency:
Antonym:
Story:
A long time ago, there were no donkeys in Guizhou, China, and no one knew what a donkey looked like. One day, a man transported a donkey from another place to Guizhou. He left the donkey at the foot of a mountain. A tiger in the mountains saw the donkey braying from afar and thought, "What kind of monster is that? It looks formidable; I'd better stay away to be safe!"
After some time, the tiger observed that the donkey just walked around and occasionally brayed. The tiger thought again, "This fellow is big, but I wonder what skills it possesses. I'll test it!" The tiger stealthily approached the donkey and deliberately bumped it. The donkey, startled and angry, exclaimed, "Why did you bump me?" Then it lifted its leg to kick the tiger, once, twice, thrice, but missed every time.
The tiger then realized, "This donkey only knows how to kick people; it has no real ability!" So, the tiger opened its mouth wide, ready to eat the donkey. The donkey screamed in fright, "Don't come closer! I can kick people!" The tiger laughed and said, "All you can do is kick; I, on the other hand, can eat people!" With that, the tiger devoured the donkey.
Later, the story of the Guizhou donkey being eaten by the tiger became the idiom 'Qianlü zhi ji' (the Guizhou donkey's tricks), used to describe someone whose ideas and methods are ordinary and lack anything special. This idiom is also commonly referred to as 'Qianlü ji qiong' (the Guizhou donkey's skills exhausted).