Yan Zhitui was a renowned literary figure during the Northern Qi Dynasty.
Once, Yan Zhitui went to Yecheng on business and heard a joke about "a scholar buying a donkey," which he recorded in his later work *The Yan Family Instructions*.
In the city of Ye, there was a scholar who had memorized the classics and considered himself a profound intellectual, but in truth, he was nothing more than a pedantic and laughable bookworm.
One day, the scholar's donkey died. He went to the market to buy another. After choosing one, he agreed on a price with the seller. The scholar asked the seller to write a receipt. The seller said, "I can't read or write. You write it for me!"
The scholar readily agreed. The donkey's owner quickly fetched paper and brush, and the scholar began writing with great seriousness.
The scholar wrote with great care, and passersby gathered to watch. After a long time, he had covered three full sheets of paper with dense writing before finally completing the document.
The donkey's owner said, "I can't read; read the written agreement out loud to me."
The scholar nodded, cleared his throat, and began reciting with a pompous sway of his head. After a long while, he finished reading all three pages. The donkey seller, utterly confused, said, "You've filled three whole pages, yet I haven't heard the word 'donkey' even once! All you needed to write was: 'On such-and-such a date, I sold you a donkey for this amount of money.' Why waste so many words on nonsense?"
The bystanders who had gathered around burst into laughter at the scene.
When word of this spread, someone composed a three-line satirical proverb: "The scholar bought a donkey, wrote three sheets of paper, but never mentioned the word 'donkey.'" This was a sharp mockery of the pedantic scholar. Later, people condensed this into the idiom "The Scholar Buys a Donkey," used to criticize speech or writing that is full of nonsense and misses the point.
Source: *The Yan Family Instructions*
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "博士买驴" came to describe how speech or writing that is full of nonsense and misses the point.