A Peach for a Piece of Jade

Reading one Yue Lao love lot, a two-line verse from the Book of Songs, and what it says about giving and receiving in love

In Chinese folklore, the god of marriage is an old man who sits reading under the moon. He's called Yue Lao (月老), short for "the Old Man under the Moon," and he carries a red thread. People whose lives are meant to be joined, the story goes, were tied together with it from birth. The tale is usually traced to a Tang dynasty story collection by Li Fuyan, and the red thread has stayed in everyday Chinese ever since.

Temples dedicated to Yue Lao often keep a set of love lots: numbered verses you draw when you have a question about a relationship. The set used in Taiwan has 100 lots. Unlike the better-known Guanyin temple poems, they aren't graded as good, middling or bad. They speak only of bonds: meeting, staying together, missing each other, meeting again. Most of the verses are lines lifted from Chinese classics such as the Book of Songs, the Analects, Mencius and Tang and Song poetry, so each one is a small piece of very old literature.

Here's one of the warmest: lot No. 42. It's only ten characters long.

The verse

投我以木桃

報之以瓊瑤

You gave me a peach;

I give you fine jade in return.

The "peach" here (木桃) is a humble fruit. The "jade" (瓊瑤) is a precious stone. What you got was ordinary, and what you give back is valuable. That imbalance is the whole point.

Where it comes from

The lines come from a short song in the Book of Songs (詩經), China's oldest collection of poetry, called "Mu Gua" (木瓜, "The Quince"). It has three stanzas that are almost identical, each swapping in a different fruit and a different jade, and each ending with the same line:

匪報也，永以為好也。

Not as repayment, but so we may be close forever.

That last line is the key to reading the lot. The jade isn't payment for the fruit. It isn't settling a debt, and it certainly isn't trying to outdo the other person. It says: I noticed what you gave me, it mattered, and I want to answer it with something deeper.

Readers over the centuries haven't agreed on who the giver and receiver are. Some read the song as lovers exchanging tokens; others read it as friends, or something more formal. In a love lot, it naturally takes on the romantic sense.

What the lot says about love

The site's note for this lot sums it up as a love that is "given and returned, sincerity for sincerity": the other person's kindness deserves a warmer response. It then offers one line for each situation:

• Single: Someone shows you kindness; respond sincerely.
• In a relationship: Love flows both ways; keep caring for it.
• Married: Cherish each other with small tokens of thanks.

None of these lines tells you who you'll meet or whether something will work out. Each one is about what you can do.

For someone single, it's about not brushing off kindness, whether out of shyness or suspicion. In a relationship, it's about balance: lasting relationships rarely run on one person always giving and the other always receiving. For a married couple it's the most everyday advice of all. After years together, a thank-you or a small gesture is exactly the thing that gets forgotten.

How to read a love lot sensibly

It's natural to draw a lovely lot like this and think, does this mean it's going to happen? I'd suggest reading it differently. A love lot works better as a mirror than as a promise. Love involves another person with their own mind, and no verse can decide for them.

What makes No. 42 a good lot isn't that it predicts anything. It turns your attention to something you actually control: how you respond to the care people show you. A few questions it might prompt:

1. Has someone been kind to me recently, and have I really acknowledged it?
2. In my relationship, do I mostly receive, or mostly give without saying what I need?
3. When did I last do something small and unasked-for for the person closest to me?

If reading this makes you think of someone and you send them a quick thank-you, the lot has done its job. A fruit and a piece of jade from a song more than two thousand years old still carry a simple idea: care should be noticed, and it should be answered.

I run a small free site, Tianjidu (天機渡), where you can draw a Yue Lao love lot online and read all 100 verses with their sources and line-by-line notes. It's for cultural interest only, not prediction. Lot No. 42 is here: https://www.yivua.com/yuelao/42 — The lot pages are currently in Chinese.