a mere common brick to draw others into throwing in their pieces of jade

a mere common brick to draw others into throwing in their pieces of jade

Brick of jade, Chinese idiom, Pinyin is y ǐ NY ù zh ī Zhu ā n, which means to show modesty. It refers to shallow and immature opinions expressed in order to elicit other people's wise opinions. From the biography of lanterns in Jingde.

The origin of Idioms

Shi Daoyuan's Jingde Zhuandeng Lu (Volume 10) in Song Dynasty said: "recently, I have thrown a brick to attract jade, but I have got a pendant."

Idiom usage

It's an object; it's an object. What we have is just a brick to draw jade from. On new democracy by Mao Zedong