中国网站品牌栏目（频道）
“回答得好！”李光头竖起大拇指夸奖一声，然后嘿嘿笑着切入正题了，他说：“这样吧，我不吃你的三鲜面，你把板车借我用一天，就算抵消了三鲜面的债。”童铁匠不知道李光头葫芦里卖得什么药，他说：“你借我的板车干什么？”（余华《兄弟》）
“You got me!” Baldy Li showed his admiration by giving him a thumbs-up but then immediately cut to the chase. “How about this: I won’t have you treat me to a bowl of house-special noodles, but if you lend me your cart for a day, we’ll call it even.” Blacksmith Tong had no idea where Baldy Li was going with this. He asked, “So why do you want to borrow my pullcart?”
My comments:
In a sports competition, if two opposing teams or players run up the same number of points, the game is described as tied or the scores are even.
In our example, to call it even is to say the two men no longer owe each other anything. Tong wants to do a favor for Li by treating him to a bowl of noodles but Li prefer having Tong’s cart for a day. By exchanging one favor (noodles) with another (cart), Li calls it even because he receives the same number of favors from Tong – one – as before.
Same for Tong – he still does just one favor for Li, and so is not losing on the number count, either.
To Li’s reckoning, none of them win or lose anything by this exchange.
Does Tong like Li’s reasoning? That’s another matter entirely, but you get Li’s point, which is all that matters to us for now.
Related stories:
Take something with a pinch of salt
本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。
About the author:
Zhang Xin（张欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.
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