Favor Exchange Archives - understand-culture

Jia Yun’s Musk

In chapter 24 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the poor young relative Jia Yun asks Jia Lian for work. Jia Lian tells him that a job has just gone to Jia Qin, because his own wife, Wang Xifeng, “begged me again and again.” Jia Yun asks his uncle, who keeps a spice shop, for borneol and musk on credit. The uncle refuses.

A neighbor, the moneylender Ni Er, then lends him the money without interest and without a contract. “Since you speak of us as friends, how could I lend to you at interest?” Jia Yun takes the spices to Wang Xifeng as a gift. She is pleased, but she says nothing yet of the job she means to give him. She fears he would think she had promised him a post for a little incense.

Hu Xueyan and Wang Youling

Popular accounts trace the rise of the late Qing banker Hu Xueyan to one favor. Working at a money shop, he took the risk of giving 500 taels of the shop’s silver to Wang Youling, an official waiting for a post as salt commissioner in Zhejiang, so that Wang could seek his way in the capital. Wang later rose to governor of Zhejiang. He deposited government tax silver in Hu’s bank and asked for no interest.

The story is told in the Taiwanese writer Gao Yang’s novel about Hu. A 2023 article on Sina Finance notes that how Hu actually helped Wang “can no longer be known.”

Soft Mouth, Short Hand

吃人家的嘴软，拿人家的手短 Whoever eats another’s food has a soft mouth. Whoever takes another’s things has a short hand. A person who has accepted gifts becomes partial to the giver. It is often shortened to 吃人嘴软，拿人手短.

Gift Ledgers

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.”

Leave It to Me

At the 1995 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Guo Donglin performed the sketch Youshi nin shuohua (有事您说话), “If Anything Comes Up, Just Say the Word.” His character brags to his leaders and friends that he can get sleeper tickets for the train, and people come to him for help.

In fact he gets the tickets by standing in line. When the tickets run out, he pays a high price for two scalped tickets to keep up the story.

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.

The Vocabulary of Owing

欠情 To owe feeling. To have received a kindness and not yet repaid it. In The Plum in the Golden Vase, a man greets another: “I have owed you feeling for a long time and have not come to see you, brother.”

领情 To receive feeling. To accept a gift or a kindness and feel grateful for it.

回礼 To return a courtesy. To answer a gift or a greeting with one of one’s own.

雪中送炭 To send charcoal in the snow. To help someone in urgent need. A Ming story sets it against 锦上添花, adding flowers to brocade: “There is only adding flowers to brocade. Where is there sending charcoal in the snow?”

Gifts and Renqing in Xiajia

The anthropologist Yan Yunxiang did fieldwork in Xiajia, a village in Heilongjiang. As The Paper summarizes his finding, a gift “creates a spiritual bond between the giver and the receiver, which the villagers call renqing (人情).”

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.