竹籃打水

1. • using a wicker basket to draw water (idiom) wasted effort

Character by character

• 竹(zhú)bamboo
• 籃(lán)basket
• 打(dǎ)a semantically light, transitive verb that is combined with various grammatical objects to form compound verbs and verb-object phrases with a diverse range of meanings
• 水(shuǐ)surname Shui