Baiting Someone into Paying

Meng Yixian said that things like this were actually quite common in everyday life. For example, a friend might borrow money, then drag his feet when it was time to repay it, or simply become a deadbeat. All four people present had encountered situations like that to some extent. Out of consideration for their pride, people generally rarely took the initiative to ask friends to return what they had borrowed.

Of course, there were still more honest people in the world. When Chu Chen lent things out, his friends would usually return them ahead of time, so he had never encountered anyone who borrowed something and refused to return it.

"How much was that brush pot worth?" Zhu Dafu asked.

Meng Yixian replied, "I haven't seen that brush pot myself. My friend said it was probably worth four or five thousand yuan."

"Your friend sounds pretty generous," Zhu Dafu said with a laugh.

"Bullshit! That's not generosity. He's just being generous despite being poor!"

Meng Yixian swore, then said, "He's just an ordinary retired worker who gets a pension of around a thousand yuan a month. His younger son just got married, and he sometimes has to help support him too. Four or five thousand yuan was already a considerable sum for his family!"

Hearing that, Qiao Qingtai asked in surprise, "If that's the case, why didn't he ask for the money back?"

"That's why I said he's being generous despite being poor!"

Meng Yixian shook his head and sighed. "Actually, my friend isn't generous to just anyone. It's just that this relative of his had helped him before and saved him from losing more than two thousand yuan, so he was too embarrassed to ask his relative for the money."

Zhu Dafu laughed. "Turning two thousand into four or