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)