盲人摸象(máng rén mō xiàng)

盲人摸象(máng rén mō xiàng) means mistaking a part for the whole like blind men trying to size up the elephant. It comes from an ancient Chinese parable “Blind Men and the Elephant“. It is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant’s body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. The idiom refers to only having a surface-level understanding of something, or to only understand part of something but think you have the whole story and then draw a conclusion. Click on the video to learn this Chinese idiom story!