Long ago, a man named Manyi lived in the marketplace.
Once, on a journey to a remote, undeveloped region in the wild south, he entered an utterly unremarkable shop. There, spending all his money and every valuable he carried, he purchased a pearl an inch in diameter—a treasure so rare he had never even heard of its like.
Upon returning home, the man named Manyi crafted a box from the finest materials, inlaying it with gold, silver, and other precious gems. He then placed the large pearl inside, storing it securely. Only during major festivals would he take it out to show to a few close friends.
Mani had a neighbor named Shouliang, who also heard about Mani obtaining a large pearl. Seeing the envy on people's faces when they talked about it, he several times wanted to bring out his family's secretly stored ancestral large pearl to compare with Mani's. But restrained by his ancestor's instruction "not to show it to others lightly," he gave up.
As luck would have it, both soon fell ill with a strange disease and lay bedridden.
Despite consulting countless fortune-tellers and physicians, and consuming all manner of strange and exotic remedies, the illness showed no sign of improvement. Everyone in both households was as frantic as ants on a hot pan, yet they remained utterly at a loss.
One day, a traveling physician arrived in the city, claiming he could cure all sorts of difficult and rare diseases.
In desperation, they called in a doctor. Arriving at the house, the physician examined the patient and declared, "This illness requires pearl powder mixed into the medicine to cure it completely." He quickly wrote a prescription and left.
But Man Yi refused to damage the priceless pearl, so he only took the medicine from the prescription; Shou Liang, however, gritted his teeth and swallowed the medicine mixed with his family's heirloom pearl powder.
A few days later, the wandering physician visited Manyi's home to inquire about his condition, and Manyi told him exactly what had happened.
The doctor said, "May I see your treasure?"
Satisfied, he opened the box.
“Truly a rare treasure!” the physician said. “Why don’t you take it out into the wider world to show its brilliance?”
Shouliang told the imperial physician that the medicine had been taken but showed no effect.
"Then show me the pearl you used," the physician said.
Unable to help, Shouliang struggled to take it out. The doctor looked at it and laughed loudly, saying, "This is no pearl at all—it's the eye of a large fish from the ocean. Truly, fish eyes passing for pearls—how could that cure your illness!"
Later, the idiom "Fish Eyes Mixed with Pearls" came to describe passing off the fake as genuine, the cheap as valuable, or the inferior as superior.
Source: *Han Shi Wai Zhuan*
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "鱼目混珠" came to describe passing off the fake as genuine, the cheap as valuable, or the inferior as superior.