The Chinese idiom “黔驴技穷” (qián l? jì qióng) literally means “the donkey has exhausted its tricks” and it is based on a fable included in the book “San Jie” by Liu Zongyuan(1), who was one of the two finest prose writers of the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618–907).
The Chinese idiom 濫竽充數 (làn yú chōng shù), literally “pretend to play the yu in order to make up the number,” is often translated as “be there just to make up the number.”