Stealing the beams and changing the pillars

From Temasek Review article 偷梁换柱 (A Chinese idiom)

Here is an extract of the first two paragraphs:

"

有个人在餐馆吃饭，看到汤碗里有一只苍蝇，便叫来侍者问："怎么汤碗里有只苍蝇？"侍者回答说："你只花5块钱就有菜有汤，你还想吃什么？"

本来真正的问题是餐馆的卫生情况 (hygiene)，结果被侍者偷梁换柱，问题变成 "你花了多少钱"。如果顾客不警觉，与侍者在"花了多少钱"上争吵，侍者便成功的转移视线，避开真正的问题。搞不好最后顾客还要赞同5块钱的确很便宜！

"

(Someone was dining at a restaurant when he saw a housefly in his bowl of soup. So he summoned the waiter and asked, "Why is there a housefly in the soup bowl?" The waited answered, "You only spent 5 dollars and you've got soup with ingredients, what more do you want?"

The real issue was actually concerning the hygiene of the restaurant, but it resulted in the waiter "stealing the beams and changing the pillars," literally switching the topic to that of "How much money have you spent?" If the customer weren't vigilant, and prowled with the waiter on the question of "how much money was spent," then the waiter would have succeeded in diverging from issue proper and effectively avoiding the real problem. It could even get as bad as the customer ending up agreeing that 5 dollars is indeed such a low price!)

Read the whole article here:

http://www.temasekreview.com/index.php?s=偷梁换柱