中间人 A person in the middle. Someone who introduces, mediates or witnesses between two sides.
和事佬 A peacemaker. Someone who settles quarrels.
说和 To talk two sides into making peace. The word appears in Dream of the Red Chamber.
托人 To entrust a matter to another person. To ask someone to act on one’s behalf.
吃讲茶 To drink argument tea. In old China, the two sides of a dispute went to a teahouse and asked the people there to judge who was right. A 2024 article on Chengdu teahouses describes it: “When ordinary people had a conflict, they did not go to the authorities but to the teahouse for mediation.”
一把手 The first hand. The head of a unit or organization.
拍板 To strike the board. In old trading houses, a sale was sealed by striking a wooden board. Today it means that the person in charge makes the final decision.
一言堂 The hall of one word. Once a shop’s sign for fixed prices. Today a leader who decides alone.
官大一级压死人 An official one rank higher crushes a person to death. In 2018, the Party’s discipline newspaper used the phrase to criticize an official who pulled rank.
礼尚往来 Propriety values going and coming. The line comes from the Book of Rites: “The highest value is virtue. Next comes giving and repaying. Propriety values going and coming. To give and receive nothing back is against propriety. To receive and give nothing back is also against propriety.”
Today the phrase is used for gifts and favors, and also for answering a person in kind.
Lord Mengchang of Qi sent his retainer Feng Xuan to collect debts in his fief of Xue, and told him to buy whatever the household lacked. In Xue, Feng Xuan claimed his lord’s authority, forgave the debts and burned the debt tallies. The people cheered. Back home, he explained: “What your house lacks is righteousness. I bought righteousness for you.” The lord was not pleased.
A year later, the king dismissed Lord Mengchang, and he had to go back to Xue. While he was still a hundred li away, the people came out, old and young, to welcome him on the road. He turned to Feng Xuan: “Today I see the righteousness that you bought for me.” (Strategies of the Warring States)
In chapter 50 of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the defeated Cao Cao flees by the Huarong road and finds Guan Yu waiting for him. Guan Yu has signed a military pledge to stop him. Cao Cao asks him to “give weight to the feelings of former days.”
Guan Yu answers that he once received Cao Cao’s great kindness, “but I have already repaid it” by killing two enemy generals and lifting a siege. Cao Cao asks whether he still remembers the five passes, where Guan Yu killed Cao Cao’s generals as he left him years before. Guan Yu turns his horse and orders his men to spread out, which plainly means letting Cao Cao go.
Back at camp, Zhuge Liang says: “Guan Yu thought of Cao Cao’s old kindness and let him go on purpose. But there is a military pledge.”
In exile, the Jin prince Chong’er came to Chu, and the King of Chu gave a feast for him. The king asked how he would repay him. Chong’er answered that if he ever returned to rule Jin and their armies met on the central plain, “I will withdraw three marches before you.” (Zuo Zhuan)
In 632 BCE, now Duke Wen of Jin, he faced the Chu army and withdrew three marches, about ninety li. His adviser Zi Fan explained: “Without Chu’s kindness we would not be here. We withdraw three marches to avoid them, and that is our repayment.” Then the armies met at Chengpu. The story gave Chinese the idiom 退避三舍, to withdraw three marches.
人情 Human feeling. Also a favor, or a gift. 做个人情, to do someone a favor.
卖人情 To sell a favor. To do someone a good turn on purpose, so that they feel grateful. A dictionary gives the example: “If you sell him a favor today, he will surely repay you in the future.”
人情世故 Human feeling and the ways of the world. The knowledge of how to deal with people.
At a Chinese wedding, guests give gift money, a custom called 随份子. A commentary published in Chinese media in September 2026 described its logic. Gift money “has taken on a kind of contractual character.” A guest gives now so as to receive “an equal return gift from the other side” at their own wedding in the future. “From this angle, it is even like an interest-free loan.”
The same piece reported that the city of Shangluo in Shaanxi had issued reference limits on gift money: no more than 100 yuan in the countryside and 200 yuan in the city.
In February 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued Regulations on Requesting Instructions and Reporting on Major Matters. Their rule is short: what must be requested must be requested, and what must be reported must be reported (该请示的必须请示，该报告的必须报告).
A request to a higher Party organization on a major matter must be made in advance, so that the higher level has enough time to study it and decide. Only when an emergency leaves no time to ask may an official act first. Even then, the official must report to the higher level promptly afterwards.