What is Kong Yiji’s fennel beans?

It comes from Lu Xun’s short story "Kong Yiji". It is often used to describe the disdain and irony of showing off.

As an intellectual in the old society, Kong Yiji was poisoned by the feudal system and the imperial examination system. He was mentally pedantic and insensitive, and in life he was industrious and impoverished. When he was drinking at the Xianheng Hotel, he would always show off his knowledge to the young waiters, such as "There are four ways to write fennel beans."

After Kong Yiji learned that the accounting boy knew how to write the word "fennel", he asked the boy if he knew the four ways to write the word "fennel". This fully exposed Kong Yiji's "pedantry" in reality, and what supported his "pedantry" was his strong belief in writing.

In fact, there is a rule in writing from complex to simple. There are four ways to write fennel beans, but except for "fennel", the other three are just uncommon characters and have no practical use. But Kong Yiji remembered them all and used them to show off. This kind of pedantic and backward thinking and behavior is bound to be disliked by people. No wonder the young man is not enthusiastic and wants to "walk away with his mouth shut." Even the children laughed at his cliche remark of "too much, not too much" and walked away laughing.

"Kong Yiji" is a novel in Lu Xun's collection of novels "The Scream", and is also the protagonist of the novel.

This novel is Lu Xun's sequel to "The Madman" before the May 4th Movement. The second vernacular novel written after "Diary". This novel describes Kong Yiji as a scholar who was not admitted as a scholar. He lacked practical skills and only had pedantic "knowledge" such as "There are several ways to write the word 'fennel' in 'fennel beans'". He lost his dignity as a human being and became the object of ridicule in the tavern "Xianheng Hotel". Later, his legs were broken for stealing books. According to the content of the novel, because his surname was Kong, others nicknamed him "Kong Yiji" from the semi-understandable words "Master Kong Yiji" written on the red paper. The novel exposed some social problems at that time - the imperial examination system created a large number of scholars who only knew how to write papers and had no practical skills to make a living. The novel creates the image of Kong Yiji, a ridiculous and pathetic low-level character, and exposes the indifference between people.