Ongoing Exchange Archives - understand-culture

A Quince for Jade

Tou wo yi mugua, bao zhi yi qiongju. Fei bao ye, yong yi wei hao ye. “A quince was thrown to me. I gave back a red jade pendant. It was not a repayment. It was so that we would always be friends.” The ode Mugua, in the Airs of Wei of the Book of Songs, repeats this in three verses. Each time a piece of fruit is answered with jade.

The traditional Mao preface reads the poem as an expression of thanks. After the state of Wei was defeated by the Di, Duke Huan of Qi rescued it and gave it carriages, horses, vessels and clothing. The people of Wei “wished to repay him generously, and made this poem.”

The Timely Rain

When the Water Margin introduces Song Jiang, it says that he spent freely and treated gold like dirt. “When people asked him for money or goods, he never refused.” He gave out coffins and medicine, “relieved the poor, helped those in urgent need and supported those in trouble.”

“For this he was famous in Shandong and Hebei, and everyone called him the Timely Rain.” The novel explains the name. People compared him to rain that falls from heaven just in time and saves all living things.

Emotional Investment

In 2016, China’s Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate issued an interpretation of the law on bribery. It covers an official who accepts property worth 30,000 yuan or more from a subordinate or from someone under the official’s administration. If the gift “may affect the exercise of official power,” it is treated as a promise to seek a benefit for the giver.

The rule applies even when the giver has never asked for anything. A law professor writing in The Paper named what it targets: the so-called 感情投资, “emotional investment.”

Face and Favor

The psychologist Hwang Kwang-kuo built a model of how Chinese people decide on a request. Starting from Fei Xiaotong’s idea of ties that are closer or more distant, he divides relationships into three kinds: expressive, mixed and instrumental.

Each kind follows its own rule. For expressive ties, the rule of need applies. For instrumental ties, the rule of fairness applies. For mixed ties, the person who controls the resource follows the rule of renqing (人情). He weighs what helping would cost against the return that may come in the future.

A Rare Good Worth Holding

The merchant Lü Buwei was trading in Handan when he saw Zichu, a grandson of the King of Qin held there as a hostage and living in hardship. The Records of the Grand Historian says: “He pitied him and said, ‘This is a rare good worth holding.'” (此奇货可居)

Lü Buwei went to Zichu and said: “I can make your house great.” Zichu laughed. Lü answered: “My house waits for your house to become great.” He offered a thousand gold to travel west and win Zichu the position of heir. Zichu later became King Zhuangxiang of Qin.

Courtesy Values Reciprocity

礼尚往来 Propriety values going and coming. The line comes from the Book of Rites: “The highest value is virtue. Next comes giving and repaying. Propriety values going and coming. To give and receive nothing back is against propriety. To receive and give nothing back is also against propriety.”

Today the phrase is used for gifts and favors, and also for answering a person in kind.

Selling a Favor

人情 Human feeling. Also a favor, or a gift. 做个人情, to do someone a favor.

卖人情 To sell a favor. To do someone a good turn on purpose, so that they feel grateful. A dictionary gives the example: “If you sell him a favor today, he will surely repay you in the future.”

人情世故 Human feeling and the ways of the world. The knowledge of how to deal with people.