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The Bard was right: Neither a borrower nor a lender be

By Xiao Hao (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-17 10:44

Ever since we met in 2006, Jiaohao would call or send text messages on every holiday, Chinese or Western. He had just been discharged from the army. I owed him a big favor so I waited to return in kind. Finally, on a March day in 2007, he called to borrow some money.

I have always been awkward about borrowing and lending money. Growing up, I often heard my parents talking about relatives and colleagues asking to borrow; they did not want to lend but felt obliged to. In college, I had aggressive borrower classmates who would snatch my bank book and point to the balance, right after I had said that I had just so unfortunately lent all the money to friends far away. Worse than the decision to lend was the agony of asking back the money given - to ask would make one lose face; to not ask would make one lose money

Luckily my friends later all became richer than me. I had not had to worry about lending money in my adult life, until Jiahao.

But to say no to Jiaohao was impossible. His dad had died young and his mother remarried someone kind but hopeless at making a living. His uncles in the traditional Guangdong clan had cheated him out of his rightful inheritance. Jiaohao also had two step-siblings to support. The family's finances were so dire at one stage that his Buddhist mother resold stolen bicycles to make ends meet. Guilty and desperate, she wanted to become a nun, which Jiaohao made her promise to delay until the kids had grown up. His biggest wish, Jiahao had told me, was to see his siblings finish school and have a future better than him.

So I lent Jiaohao the 3,000 yuan ($435) and found him a job at a friend's furniture factory. Quickly he paid me back. He kept calling and sending messages, reminding me to call my mom on Mother's Day, my dad on Father's Day, and sending me dried jelly fish from his hometown.

Six months later, he hesitantly asked to borrow 5,000. I paused a bit over the phone and said yes. I could not say no, when he was telling me his siblings needed money to go to school. Once again he paid back promptly. A friend of his visiting Beijing brought a nice ashtray from him. I said I was trying to quit smoking. He said keep it for your guests.

For a while, he seemed happy at the furniture factory. He met his girlfriend there. But his mother wanted him to marry a local girl. Obediently, he moved back for a temporary job at the county government.

A year later, he called me again, this time with much longer pauses between sentences. He said that there was a new full-time opening. To take care of all the decision makers would require a large sum.

I asked how much. He said 20,000. I said let me see if I had that kind of money in the bank.

I had that kind of money in the bank. But a nagging suspicion bothered me - had he been nice to me, all along, just in order to use me?

My American friend Kate laughed at my story. "I hate some of my Chinese friends calling and sending me text messages on holidays," she said. "I know they are doing all that to get something from me later."

"Wait," she studied me curiously, "you are Chinese and shouldn't you know that?"

In the end, I lent Jiaohao the money. I had no assurance that he would pay me back this time, or that he would ever contact me again; but I had to take the chance that he was a genuinely kind friend, that he genuinely needed help, and that not all Chinese value utility over trust.

He did not drop off the face of the earth. He still called on holidays and sent me greetings. He is now working full time at the local family planning bureau. Just yesterday, he sent me a box of moon cakes for the mid-Autumn festival.

But I still do not know when he will pay me back, if ever.