投桃报李 — Chinese idiom
投桃报李
tóu táo bào lǐ
Traditional: 投桃報李
Meaning
- toss a peach, get back a plum ; to return a favor
- to exchange gifts
- Scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.
Character by character
- 投tóuto pitch, to throw; to bid, to invest
- 桃táopeach; marriage; surname
- 报bàoto announce, to report; newspaper; payback, reveng
- 李lǐplum; luggage; surname
Idioms sharing a character
- 五体投地 wǔ tǐ tóu dì
- 情投意合 qíng tóu yì hé
- 投石问路 tóu shí wèn lù
- 投笔从戎 tóu bǐ cóng róng
- 投缳自缢 tóu huán zì yì
- 投袂而起 tóu mèi ér qǐ
- 投鞭断流 tóu biān duàn liú
- 投鼠忌器 tóu shǔ jì qì
- 明珠暗投 míng zhū àn tóu
- 举手投足 jǔ shǒu tóu zú
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.