📖 Meaning
A lamp coated in black lacquer that blocks out all light. It is used metaphorically to describe someone who is completely ignorant, obtuse, and impervious to reason. The image evokes a person so thoroughly closed off that no light of understanding can penetrate.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom comes from Ming dynasty writer Feng Menglong's vernacular story collection "Xingshi Hengyan" (Stories to Awaken the World), volume 35. In the original passage, the character Xiao Yingshi is described as not being a "black lacquered leather lamp" or a "mud-clogged bamboo tube" — that is, not someone who is utterly clueless and impossible to enlighten. The metaphor likens a hopelessly ignorant or unreasonable person to a lamp so thickly coated with black lacquer that not a single ray of light can pass through it.
💡 Example Usage
他简直是个黑漆皮灯，怎么解释都不明白。
He's like a black-lacquered lamp — no matter how you explain it, he just doesn't understand.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 黑漆皮灯
- Pinyin: hēi qī pí dēng
- Literal Translation: black, lacquer, leather, lamp
- Category: Knowledge
- Characters: 4