As a common phenomenon in today's society, gift-giving plays a vital role in people's life and daily communication. And it has become a global social etiquette. Meanwhile, as a basic but important need of human beings, face is frequently used by people in daily life, especially in gift etiquette, and face is precisely an aspect of gift etiquette, which can’t be ignored. In order to avoid face-threatening behavior in intercultural gift etiquette, we have to understand and be familiar with the differences of face among people who have different culture background. Although domestic and foreign scholars have done a positive research on gift etiquette, the research from the perspective of face theory still has a great space and needs further study. In this paper, Brown & Levinson's face theory is applied to analyze Chinese and Western gift etiquette and this thesis also tries to explore the cultural factors that cause the differences through some examples. This thesis will not only help us better understand the face theory, but also render us a helping hand in finding strategies of avoiding Face Threatening Acts, and promote interpersonal communication, especially benefit to intercultural communication.