一飯千金 One Meal , a Thousand Pieces of Gold

The most famous thank-you in Chinese history was for a few weeks of rice. More than two thousand years later, the Chinese still have a saying for it: 一飯千金. One meal, a thousand pieces of gold.

More than two thousand years ago, a young man named Han Xin lost his parents and had nothing to eat. He fished below the city wall, hoping to catch something to eat. A woman in his hometown saw him going hungry and shared her food with him, day after day, for several weeks, until he was well again. When he could stand on his own, he told her, "Ma'am, I shall repay you in full." She shook her head. "I fed you because you were hungry. I never asked for anything back."

The same town had a bully. One day he blocked Han Xin's way outside a butcher's shop. "If you're not afraid of dying, cut off my head. If you are, crawl between my legs." Han Xin looked at him for a long moment. Then he got down on his hands and knees and crawled, while the whole street laughed. He had more to live for than one man's insult.

Years later, that hungry young man had become the greatest general of his age. He won battle after battle, once famously fighting with his back to a river so his soldiers could not retreat, and helped found the Han dynasty, which ruled China for four hundred years. When the wars were over, one of the first things he did was go home.

He found the woman who had fed him and gave her a thousand catties of gold, more than two hundred pounds of it, for a few weeks of rice. Then the bully recognized him, fell to his knees and begged for his life. Everyone expected Han Xin to have him killed. Instead, he made the man an officer in charge of keeping the peace. When his men asked why, Han Xin said: "When he insulted me, could I not have killed him? But it would have gained me nothing. So I swallowed my pride that day, and that is how I came this far."

Shen Yun brings his story to the stage in a dance called Han Xin, about loyalty, bravery, forgiveness and faith. Each season the company revives stories like this one from five thousand years of Chinese culture, because the values inside them were once simply how people lived. Remember a kindness. Repay it more than it cost. Forgive when you have the power not to.