It's hard to paint a tiger without skin(huà hǔ huà pí nán huà gǔ)

It's hard to paint a tiger without skin

It's easy to draw the tiger's appearance when painting tiger, but it's difficult to draw the tiger's momentum. It's easy to know a person, but it's hard to understand a person's heart.

It's the same as "it's hard to draw bones when drawing dragons and tigers", and there is an old saying that "knowing people, knowing faces, not knowing hearts".

interpretation

You can draw tiger skin, but it is difficult to draw bones directly through their skin and flesh; metaphor you can understand a person, know what he looks like, but it is difficult to know what he is thinking. It can be explained that it is difficult to understand the essence through the phenomenon, or it is difficult to measure the human mind.

come from

The first part of Zhang kongmu's intelligent exploration of the magic Horo by Meng Hanqing in Yuan Dynasty: "do you know who I am? It's a good way: it's hard to draw a tiger's skin, but it's hard to draw a bone

Chinese PinYin : huà hǔ huà pí nán huà gǔ