In chapter 3 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the young Lin Daiyu arrives at the Jia mansion in the capital. She has often heard her mother say that this house is not like other families. “So she took care at every step and paid attention at every moment. She would not say one word more or take one step more than she had to, for fear of being laughed at.” (步步留心，时时在意，不肯轻易多说一句话，多行一步路，惟恐被人耻笑了他去)
The house is the home of her own grandmother.
After Zhuge Liang laid out his plan for the realm, Liu Bei “grew closer to him day by day.” The Records of the Three Kingdoms continues: “Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and the others were displeased.” Liu Bei explained: “For me to have Kongming is like a fish having water. I ask you gentlemen not to speak of it again.” (孤之有孔明，犹鱼之有水也。愿诸君勿复言。) Guan Yu and Zhang Fei stopped.
In 1999, Yang Yiyan published a case study of how trust is built, titled Zijiren (自己人), “One of Us,” in the journal Sociological Studies (社会学研究). Yang argued that Chinese people include others within the boundary of their own self, the family, and that this forms a boundary of trust.
Yang wrote that the boundary can move. “Through interaction, an outsider can be accepted as one of us.” Turning an outsider into one of us generally means a process “from strangeness or surface contact to intimacy, trust and a sense of obligation, or deep interaction.”
The Taiwanese scholar Cheng Bor-Shiuan was among the first to apply Fei Xiaotong’s differential mode of association to Chinese organizations. He proposed the concept of chaxu shi lingdao (差序式领导), differential leadership. In a study published in 1995, he named a typical sign of favoritism among Chinese leaders. They are “generous and understanding toward insiders, strict and demanding toward outsiders.”
A 2018 review in the journal Foreign Economics and Management sums up the concept. Such a leader divides subordinates into “insiders” and “outsiders” by how close the relationship is, how loyal they are and how capable they are.
In chapter 39 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the poor country woman Liu Laolao comes back to the Jia mansion, where she was once given twenty taels of silver. She brings dates, squash and wild greens. “This year we harvested two more shi of grain, and the melons and vegetables did well. These are the first ones picked. We did not dare sell them. We kept the best for the ladies to taste.”
In chapter 119 of the 120-chapter edition, the family has fallen. Wang Xifeng’s daughter Qiaojie is about to be promised to a foreign vassal. Liu Laolao, her godmother, is announced at the back gate. She offers to take the girl to her village and hide her there.
In 1996, the scholar Shang Huipeng described wedding gifts in eastern Henan in the journal Sociological Studies. “Every family holding a wedding also has a detailed account book. It records the names of the givers and the kind and amount of the gifts, so that they can be repaid later.” The ledger, he wrote, “ensures that this savings will not be forgotten.”
Writing about gifts in Dream of the Red Chamber, the scholar Deng Yunxiang described a similar record, the lizhang (礼账). One of its purposes was “for checking when returning gifts. How much the other side sent, and how much to send when the other side has an occasion.”
In October 2023, the social survey center of the China Youth Daily reported a survey of 1,000 young people on suifenzi (随份子), the gift money given at weddings and other occasions. 93.2 percent said that giving it was a burden. 50.2 percent said people should dare to say no to high sums. 45.7 percent said closeness should no longer be measured by the size of the gift.
46.1 percent said the custom had gone sour and should be abolished. 33.6 percent said it was a blessing and should be kept.
In February 2024, The Paper reported on luxury car rentals before the Spring Festival. A Rolls-Royce Phantom rented for 8,000 yuan a day, with a minimum of seven days. On Ctrip, the Beijing holiday rate for the same model was 9,600 yuan a day. Ctrip reported that its Spring Festival car rental bookings had grown more than threefold over the year before.
A partner in a Beijing rental firm said that the early renters did it “only to prop up the front of the house” (撑门面). Now their reasons vary. Some rent sports cars to drive home for matchmaking dates.
In Wei, Zheng An’ping hid the fugitive Fan Ju under a new name. When the Qin envoy Wang Ji asked whether Wei had a worthy man to take west, Zheng An’ping brought Fan Ju to him at night. Wang Ji carried Fan Ju into Qin, where he rose to chief minister. At Fan Ju’s urging, the king made Wang Ji governor of Hedong and also took on Zheng An’ping, as a general.
Later, Zheng An’ping was surrounded by Zhao and surrendered with 20,000 men. Fan Ju sat on straw and asked to be punished. The Records of the Grand Historian explains: “Under the law of Qin, when a man recommends someone and the one recommended proves bad, each is punished for that crime.” Fan Ju’s crime called for the seizure of three sets of his kin.
King Zhaoxiang, afraid of hurting his chief minister’s feelings, ordered that anyone who spoke of Zheng An’ping would be punished for the same crime.
In the Mencius, a man asks why it was so hard for the gentlemen of old to take office. Mencius answers with marriage. “If, without waiting for the command of their parents and the words of a matchmaker, they bore holes to peep at each other and climb over walls to meet, then their parents and everyone in the state despise them.” (不待父母之命、媒妁之言，钻穴隙相窥，逾墙相从，则父母、国人皆贱之。)
“The men of old always wanted office,” Mencius goes on. “But they hated to go there by an improper way. Going by an improper way is like boring holes in the wall.”