袖手旁观

Origin and story

Han Yu's memorial for Liu Zongyuan compares neglected talent to an expert carpenter standing with his hands tucked into his sleeves while an unskilled worker struggles, sweating and injuring his fingers. The point is that a capable person has not been given the opportunity to do useful work. Han Yu is lamenting his friend's exclusion, not accusing him of selfish indifference.

The exact later expression appears in Zhou Mi's Song collection Qi Dong Ye Yu. It preserves the image of hands kept out of action, but modern use often adds criticism: someone watches a problem without helping. The earlier literary context and the later common implication are therefore not identical.