English

Apple of Sodom During the Ming Dynasty, there was a fruit seller in Hangzhou who was very good at storing citrus. The citrus he preserved would not rot for a winter or a summer. The orange peel looked beautiful. It was full of water, like a Gemstone. Although the price of citrus is high, there are many people buy it. Once, the Ming Dynasty minister Liu Ji bought a citrus from the seller, peel off the skin and smell bad, and then look inside the fruit pulp, dry like broken cotton. Liu Ji angrily asked: "Why do you cheat customers? " The citrus seller smiled and said, "I 've been in this business for years and I live on it. I am willing to sell, people are willing to buy, only you are not satisfied. You know, there are many deceivers in the world today! Don't you think that those generals armed with military symbols seems to be defending the country . Have they really have the ability to fight like Sunzi and Wuqi? Are those men who are officer and full of dignity really the people who govern the country? The suffering of the people, they do not care at all; The bureaucrats act wildly in defiance of the law or public opinion, and they did not stop them. They only eat their own food and spend the country's food and money, but they do not know shame. These guys, like the citrus I sell, look beautiful, but they don't have anything in their stomachs. " When Liu Ji heard this, he was speechless. After returning home, he wrote an article entitled "The Man of the Citrus", which included the phrase "Gold and jade on the outside, rot and decay on the inside(Apple of Sodom)". Later, people used the phrase "Gold and jade on the outside, rot and decay on the inside(Apple of Sodom)" as an idiom. Although the metaphor is very gorgeous, it is already a mess inside.