引荐 To lead in and recommend. To recommend someone, or to introduce someone into a group.
中保 A guarantor in the middle. A person who stands between the two sides of a sale or a loan and answers for it.
铺保 A shop guarantee. In the past, a guarantee given for a person in the name of a shop.
不看僧面看佛面 If not for the monk’s face, then for the Buddha’s. To help or forgive someone for the sake of a third person.
Han Xin joined Liu Bang’s army but held only a minor post. He talked often with the chancellor Xiao He, who thought him remarkable. At Nanzheng, dozens of officers deserted, and Han Xin left too. Xiao He rode after him without telling Liu Bang. Back in camp, he told the angry king: “Generals are easy to find. As for Han Xin, he is guoshi wushuang, without equal in the realm.”
Liu Bang offered to make Han Xin a general. Xiao He said that would not keep him. Liu Bang agreed to make him grand general, with an altar and a ceremony on a chosen day. “The generals were all pleased, each thinking he would be grand general. When the appointment came, it was Han Xin, and the whole army was astonished.” (Records of the Grand Historian)
In a letter to Han Chaozong of Jingzhou, the poet Li Bai quoted a saying of the scholars of his day: sheng bu yong feng wanhu hou, dan yuan yi shi Han Jingzhou. “In life, there is no need to be made a lord of ten thousand households. One only wishes to know Han of Jingzhou.”
People’s Daily dates the letter to 734, when Li Bai was 34 and living in Anlu. He asked Han to recommend him for office. The letter brought him neither a post nor a meeting.
Many Chinese graduate students call their supervisor laoban, boss. In an essay, the philosopher Zhou Guoping called this “a fairly common phenomenon” in Chinese universities. A supervisor becomes a boss, he wrote, “first through the power to decide whether a student can graduate, and second through the funds in his hands.”
In June 2026, the Beijing News reported a survey in which more than half of the respondents wanted their supervisors to be more like supporters than traditional bosses.
In official lists, the ordinary members of the Politburo appear in the order of the number of strokes in their surnames. The members of its Standing Committee do not. Their order, Southern Weekend wrote in 2013, is tied to “their division of work and their seniority in the Party.”
The paper added: “Although the ranking of leaders carries important political information, there is no written rule for it.”
King Zhuang of Chu gave his ministers a feast. Late in the evening, when all were drunk, the candles went out. In the dark a man pulled at the dress of one of the king’s women. She tore the tassel off his hat and told the king: “Bring the light and look for the man without a tassel.”
The king said: “I gave them wine and made them drunk. Why should I display a woman’s virtue and shame an officer?” He ordered: “Whoever drinks with me tonight and does not tear off his tassel has not enjoyed himself.” More than a hundred men tore off their tassels before the lights came back.
Three years later, in a battle against Jin, one officer always fought in front. He told the king that he was the man whose tassel had been torn off. The story is in Liu Xiang’s Garden of Stories (说苑).
After Cao Cao defeated Yuan Shao at Guandu, he took Yuan Shao’s papers. Among them he found letters that men in the capital and in his own army had written to Yuan Shao. He burned them all.
The Records of the Three Kingdoms records this. A commentary quotes Cao Cao’s reason: “When Yuan Shao was strong, even I could not be sure of keeping myself safe. How much less could the others?”
人活脸，树活皮 A person lives by face, a tree lives by its bark. A person must guard his good name. Also 人要脸，树要皮.
打人休打脸，骂人休揭短 When hitting someone, do not hit the face. When scolding someone, do not expose his faults.
揭短 To expose a person’s shortcomings and make them public.
得饶人处且饶人 Where one can spare a person, spare him. To be tolerant and leave room. The line is from the Song writer Yao Kuan.
留余地 To leave room. Not to go to extremes in speech or action, so that there is space to turn back.
When Yanzi of Qi went as an envoy to Chu, the people of Chu made a small door for him beside the great gate, because he was short. Yanzi would not enter. “Those sent to a country of dogs go in by the dogs’ gate. I have been sent to Chu, so I should not go in by this gate.” He was led in through the main gate.
On another visit, the King of Chu planned to humiliate him. During a banquet, officers brought in a bound man and said he was from Qi and had stolen. The king asked Yanzi: “Do the people of Qi steal by nature?”
Yanzi answered that an orange grown south of the Huai River is an orange, but grown north of it becomes a bitter orange. People of Qi do not steal at home. “Could it be that the soil and water of Chu make people good at stealing?” The king laughed: “A sage is not a man to joke with. I have brought the shame on myself.”
论资排辈 To rank by seniority and generation. To set a person’s level and treatment by length of service and generation. A dictionary example: “When a work unit assigns housing, ranking by seniority cannot be avoided.”
老资格 Old credentials. Standing and authority that come with age, as in “a veteran diplomat.”
前辈 A person who is older, or who has longer service.