This essay is concerned with a group of long-term socially engaged art projects in contemporary China and Hong Kong that I argue are unfolding an aesthetics of reciprocity – that is they place particular attention on forming reciprocal social relations. Based on the idea of mutual aid, they propose work-study groups, learning and sharing sessions and develop practices of how to organize in common as collectives. As I will present in this essay, in all their diversity, I see the thinking of Guangzhou’s Soeng Joeng Toi, Shanghai’s Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society and the person-to-person distribution network Light Logistics working out of Hong Kong (but in essence spanning the entire world), as examples of this type of practice. I argue that the projects use maps and handbooks as guides to the disruption of the existing social relations and thus reveal reciprocity and mutual aid as vehicles for the formation of new social bonds.