In January 2013, the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released its Blue Book of Social Mentality. Its survey of city residents found that fewer than half believed that most people in society can be trusted. Only 20 to 30 percent trusted strangers. More than 70 percent said they did not dare to trust strangers.
Courtesy Values Reciprocity
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.
Guan Yu Lets Cao Cao Go
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.”
Selling a Favor
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.
Gift Money
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.
Lu Xun on Face
In October 1934, Lu Xun published a short essay called On “Face” (说”面子”). It begins: “‘Face’ is something we often hear about in conversation.”
Lu Xun writes that it is good that Chinese people want face. The pity is that this face is “round and flexible” (圆机活法) and good at changing.
Ripples on the Water
In 1947, the sociologist Fei Xiaotong published a series of essays on rural society, collected in 1948 as Rural China (乡土中国). In them he named the pattern of Chinese social relations chaxu geju (差序格局), the differential mode of association.
“Our pattern,” he wrote, is like “the ripples that spread out in circles when a stone is thrown onto the water. Each person is the center of the circles pushed out by his own social influence.”
Our Own People
自己人 Our own people, those close to us.
胳膊肘往外拐 The elbow bends outward. Said of someone who helps outsiders against their own people.
肥水不流外人田 Rich water does not flow into an outsider’s field. Keep the good things within the family.
Killing the Familiar
In 2018, Chinese media reported on dashuju shashu (大数据杀熟), “big-data killing of the familiar.” Some defined it as internet companies using their customer data to show existing customers higher prices than new customers for the same product or service.
The name expresses the expectation that a familiar customer deserves better treatment.
The Official’s Protective Charm
In chapter 4 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the new magistrate Jia Yucun takes up a murder case. A clerk shows him an “official’s protective charm” (护官符), a list of the four great families of the area: Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue. “These four families are all linked by kinship. If one suffers, all suffer. If one prospers, all prosper.” The killer is a Xue.
Jia Yucun closes the case without punishing him. The chapter title calls it “a muddled verdict in a muddled case.”