This is probably a coincidence, but I can't help but see this as 手禮 (pronounced in Cantonese as sau2 lai5, in Mandarin pinyin as shǒu lǐ), which literally does mean gesture in the sense of a hand movement (手 means "hand", 禮 means "courtesy" or "rite"), but which is found in modern Chinese mostly in the Taiwanese compound 伴手禮 meaning "souvenir" (a gift given to someone brought back from one's travels, a "gesture of companionship"), or in 按手禮 which is used in Christian religious contexts to refer to the ritual of ordination ("gesture of laying on hands").