塞耳盗钟 — “To deceive oneself by ignoring obvious facts or dangers”

Q: What is the Chinese definition of 塞耳盗钟?

比喻自欺欺人，硬要掩盖掩盖不了的事情。

塞耳盗钟 is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to deceive oneself by ignoring obvious facts or dangers”. To bury one's head in the sand; to think that by stopping one's own ears, others will not hear. Literally, “Plug one's ears to steal a bell”.

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塞耳盗钟 Pronunciation and Pinyin

塞耳盗钟 Character Breakdown

Stroke Order

Character	Pinyin	Strokes	Meaning
塞	sāi	13	to block or plug
耳	ěr	6	ear, hearing, handle, only
盗	dào	11	steal or a thief
钟	zhōng	9	bell, clock, hour, concentrate

Example Sentence with 塞耳盗钟

他以为不承认自己的错误，问题就会消失，这简直是塞耳盗钟。

He thought that if he didn't admit his mistakes, the problems would disappear, which is simply plugging his ears to steal a bell.

Origin and Story of 塞耳盗钟

Once upon a time, there was a thief who spotted a large bronze bell hanging outside a house. He wanted to steal it, but it was too heavy for him to carry by himself.

He then considered smashing it into smaller pieces to sell as scrap metal. However, he worried that the noise from breaking the bell would attract attention and prevent him from getting away with the theft.

Finally, he came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea: he would plug his own ears with cotton so he wouldn't hear the sound.

Despite his clever plan, when he started to break the bell, he was caught red-handed on the spot.