Idiom: Play the lute to a cow 对牛弹琴

There are many interesting Chinese idioms originated  from philosophical stories. If you know about the story, you will have a better understanding of the idiom. Today, Chinesehour tells you a common idiom “对牛弹琴duìniú tánqín”.

In ancient time, there lived a musician named Gong Mingyi(公明仪). He was very good at playing the Zheng (筝), a plucked string instrument. But he also behaved foolishly sometimes.      

One day, he saw a cow eating grass in the field near his house. He was inspired by the scene and ran outside to play a tune for the cow. Gong Mingyi played beautifully and he himself was intoxicated by the music. But the cow paid no heed to the elegant sounds. It simply focused its attention on eating the grass. Gong Mingyi was surprised to see that. He couldn’t understand why the cow was so indifferent to his performance. Obviously, it is not because his performance is poor. But the cow neither understood nor appreciated his elegant music!
      
From that story comes the idiom “Play the lute to a cow” (对牛弹琴 duìniú tánqín), which implies that someone speaks or writes without considering his audience. In general speaking, the speaker or writer has over-estimated his listeners or readers. In these cases, the idiom mocks the audience rather than the speaker.
 
对牛弹琴 duìniú-tánqín: 比喻对愚蠢的人讲高深的道理。也指说话做事不看对象。EG:
    劝告     他 简直  是   对牛弹琴!
Quàngào tā jiǎnzhí shì duìniú tánqín!

Your attemp to persude him is sure to  fail just like playing the lute to a cow.