To accept or apply knowledge, experiences, or theories rigidly and without real understanding; to mechanically copy or plagiarize; to appropriate crudely.
Era:
Ancient
Frequency:
Story:
During the reign of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, there was an official named Zhang Huaiqing in Zaoqiang, Hebei. Despite his lack of scholarly attainment, he enjoyed dabbling in literature. He would take Li Yifu's five-character poems and crudely add two characters to each line, presenting them as his own seven-character poems, which often made people laugh.
When others witnessed him plagiarizing poems from renowned poets like Wang Changling and Guo Zhenyi, they created a popular saying to mock his blatant copying: “He skins Wang Changling alive and swallows Guo Zhenyi raw.” This phrase later evolved into the idiom “生吞活剥” (shēng tūn huó bō).