not hold a candle

桐野 夏生の "Grotesque" を読んでいます。Yurikoを殺した容疑者Zhang Zhe-Zhongの手記からの引用です。
He'd struck a nerve. I finished red with embarrassment. Yes, I was ashamed to admit it, but I was very fond of my sister. When I worked at the straw hat factory, there were ten female employees in addition to the men. They were all teenagers. They'd call out to me and follow me around, but they didn't interest me in the slightest. Not one of them could hold a candle to Mei-kun.

"hold a candle to" （Mei-kunはZhangの妹です。）は慣用句のようです。意味を調べます。"hold a candle to" ではどの辞書にも記載が見当たりませんでしたが、否定形の"not hold a candle" で次の説明がありました。上の引用文もよく見ると否定形でした。

・Collins Dictionary: to be inferior or contemptible in comparison with: the remake doesn't hold a candle to the original film
・Farlex Dictionary of Idioms: To not be nearly as good, desirable, or impressive as someone or something else.
The sequel isn't too bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to the original.

The Word Detective (http://www.word-detective.com/)に由来の記述がありました。その抜粋を引用します。
"To hold a candle to," a phrase which first appeared around 1550, meant "to assist in a subordinate position," and if you were "not able to hold a candle to," it meant you were too incompetent to be trusted with even a simple task. Eventually, "can't hold a candle to" became a generalized way to say that something is so inferior that it cannot be fairly compared to its betters.