猴子救月 — “To make a foolish and unnecessary attempt to fix a perceived problem”

Q: What is the Chinese definition of 猴子救月?

形容没事找事，结果自己反而受到伤害

猴子救月 is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to make a foolish and unnecessary attempt to fix a perceived problem”. Often leading to self-inflicted trouble or a worse situation. It describes meddling unnecessarily, resulting in harm to oneself. Literally, “Monkey saves the moon”.

Frequency

猴子救月 Pronunciation and Pinyin

猴子救月 Character Breakdown

Stroke Order

Character	Pinyin	Strokes	Meaning
猴	hóu	12	monkey, ape, clever person
子	zi	3	son, child, seed, small thing
救	jiù	11	save, rescue, or help
月	yuè	4	moon or month

Example Sentence with 猴子救月

小明看电脑运行慢，非要自己拆开来修，结果把零件弄丢了，真是猴子救月一场空

Xiao Ming saw his computer running slowly and insisted on disassembling it to fix it himself, only to lose some parts. It was truly a case of 'the monkeys trying to save the moon' leading to nothing but trouble.

Origin and Story of 猴子救月

Once upon a time, in the ancient kingdom of Kashi, near the city of Varanasi, lived 500 macaque monkeys in a sparsely populated forest.

One day, while under a Banyan tree, they saw the moon's reflection shimmering in the water of a well. Fearing that the world would lose its light at night, they decided to 'save' the moon.

One by one, they hung upside down, linking together from a tree branch to reach into the well. Due to their combined weight, the branch snapped, and all the monkeys fell into the water.