But when it comes to the specific origin of this phrase, many people are vague.
Some people imagine knocking on pots and pans and tinkling because they are too poor to eat. Others said: I'm so poor that I can tinkle when I hit my fist.
This explanation seems very reasonable. But when I think about it carefully, I feel something is wrong. The former said that you can't knock around if you are poor, and you can't knock around if you are rich? Eat and drink, knock about, get carried away. The latter said that you can knock if you are poor and thin, but where can you make a jingle?
In fact, this phrase comes from ancient records. The classic book "On Mandarin and Lu Language" includes:
If the room is hanging, there is no grass in the wild, why not?
The room here seems to be hanging out, which means that Lu is so poor that there is nothing in the warehouse, just like hanging upside down. If the room hangs out, it later evolved into an idiom, which appeared in a large number of ancient books.
Then, if you have nothing, how can you be like an upside-down chin? As we all know, Qing is made of stone, hung on the shelf in groups according to the scale and beaten with a small hammer. What does this have to do with poverty? It turns out that in ancient Chinese, cyan and cyan can be used universally, and hanging cyan can also be written as hanging cyan, which means that cyan is also made of pottery. Think about it, there is nothing in the hollow green hanging upside down. If it is extended, it will not describe poverty.
Of course, the chin will jingle when it is knocked. Describing poverty is much more convenient, easy to understand and easy to communicate than hanging in a room. So, it jingles!
How to use this sentence?
Generally used to indicate that you are poor, for example,
A: "Are you going shopping?"
B: "I'm too poor to buy anything."