During the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), a severe famine struck the state of Qi.
A wealthy but arrogant man named Qian Ao sought to showcase his generosity by setting up food by the roadside to give to passing refugees.
A man in shabby clothes, barely able to keep his eyes open from hunger, shuffled by with his shoes dragging.
Seeing him, Qian Ao held food in his left hand and drink in his right, and shouted, "Hey! Come and eat!"
Hearing this, the man glared and said, "It is precisely because I refuse to eat food handled out in contempt that I have been reduced to this state of starvation."
Despite Qian Ao's subsequent apology, the man resolutely refused the food and ultimately died of hunger.
This story illustrates that a person with a strong sense of self-respect would rather die than accept contemptuous charity. The idiom derived from it now denotes any aid given with disrespect or insult.