Favors 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.”

Liu Laolao Repays

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.

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.”

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?”

Su Qin Repays His Debts

When Su Qin set out for Yan as a poor man, he borrowed a hundred coins. Years later he was chief minister of six states. The Records of the Grand Historian says that he repaid the lender with a hundred gold and “repaid everyone who had ever shown him kindness.”

One follower received nothing and came forward to ask. Su Qin said: “I have not forgotten you. When you came with me to Yan, you wanted to leave me again and again by the Yi River. At that time I was in trouble, so I resented you deeply. That is why I put you last. Now you will receive yours too.”

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.

The Washerwoman’s Meal

As a poor young man, Han Xin fished below the city wall of Huaiyin. A washerwoman saw that he was hungry and fed him for the several dozen days of her washing. He told her that he would repay her richly. She was angry. “A grown man who cannot feed himself! I fed you out of pity. Do you think I expected a reward?”

Years later, Han Xin became King of Chu. He summoned the washerwoman and gave her a thousand gold. Han Xin had once eaten for months at the house of a local official, until the official’s wife stopped serving him. To this man he gave a hundred coins. “You are a small man. Your kindness did not last to the end.” (Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian)

Guan Yu Lets Cao Cao Go

In chapter 50 of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the defeated Cao Cao flees by the Huarong road and finds Guan Yu waiting for him. Guan Yu has signed a military pledge to stop him. Cao Cao asks him to “give weight to the feelings of former days.”

Guan Yu answers that he once received Cao Cao’s great kindness, “but I have already repaid it” by killing two enemy generals and lifting a siege. Cao Cao asks whether he still remembers the five passes, where Guan Yu killed Cao Cao’s generals as he left him years before. Guan Yu turns his horse and orders his men to spread out, which plainly means letting Cao Cao go.

Back at camp, Zhuge Liang says: “Guan Yu thought of Cao Cao’s old kindness and let him go on purpose. But there is a military pledge.”

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.

Gift Money

At a Chinese wedding, guests give gift money, a custom called 随份子. A commentary published in Chinese media in September 2026 described its logic. Gift money “has taken on a kind of contractual character.” A guest gives now so as to receive “an equal return gift from the other side” at their own wedding in the future. “From this angle, it is even like an interest-free loan.”

The same piece reported that the city of Shangluo in Shaanxi had issued reference limits on gift money: no more than 100 yuan in the countryside and 200 yuan in the city.