Ganqing (感情) Feeling. The Handian dictionary gives one of its senses as the friendship between people, with the example: “The two of them have always been in close contact, and their feeling is very good.” Jiaoqing (交情) The friendly feeling that grows out of dealing with each other. Handian’s example is lao jiaoqing, an old friendship. Lianluo ganqing (联络感情) To cultivate feelings. Handian lists it as an example of lianluo in the sense of cultivating connections and dealing with people.
Friendship Like Water
In the Zhuangzi, Confucius asks why, in his years of trouble, his friends have drifted away and his disciples have scattered. He is told that those joined by profit abandon each other in hardship, while those joined by nature take each other in.
“The friendship of a gentleman is plain as water. The friendship of a petty man is sweet as sweet wine. The gentleman is plain and so stays close. The petty man is sweet and so breaks off.” (君子之交淡若水，小人之交甘若醴)
“Those who come together without a reason,” the passage says, “part without a reason.”
Pressed to Drink
A media survey of 2,005 people, cited by the Legal Daily in January 2022, found that 92.3 percent had been pressed to drink, and 74 percent said they accepted when they could not get out of it.
Drinking rhymes make the link between alcohol and feeling: 感情深，一口闷, “if the feeling is deep, drink it in one,” and 只要感情铁，哪怕胃出血, “as long as the friendship is iron, never mind a bleeding stomach.” In a 2021 appeal in Shanghai, two men who had urged a woman to drink before her death were held liable for 12 and 8 percent of the compensation.
The Social Credit Outline
On June 14, 2014, the State Council issued its Outline of the Plan for Building the Social Credit System, 2014 to 2020. It calls rewards for keeping faith and penalties for breaking it “the core mechanism of the social credit system.” The aim, it says, is that “those who keep faith benefit everywhere, and those who break faith can hardly take a single step.”
Words Beyond Substance
Ma Su was highly gifted and loved to discuss military plans, and Zhuge Liang thought very highly of him. On his deathbed, Liu Bei warned Zhuge Liang: “Ma Su’s words exceed his substance. He cannot be given great tasks. Watch him.” Zhuge Liang did not agree and often talked with Ma Su from morning until night.
In 228, many urged that veteran generals such as Wei Yan lead the vanguard. Zhuge Liang gave it to Ma Su instead. At Jieting, the Wei general Zhang He routed him. Ma Su died in prison, and Zhuge Liang wept for him. (Records of the Three Kingdoms)
The phrase yan guo qi shi, words beyond substance, comes from Liu Bei’s warning. Dictionaries define its original sense as boastful words that exceed real ability.
The Vocabulary of Reliability
靠谱 Reliable. Said of what is sensible and makes sense. A dictionary example: “This person does things reliably.”
放鸽子 To release the pigeons. To break an appointment and lose someone’s trust.
凡事有交代，件件有着落，事事有回音 Every matter accounted for, every item settled, every message answered. A business article says that some people define being reliable by these three things, and that the three are really one: closing the loop.
The Shanxi Draft Banks
In 1823, the Rishengchang draft bank opened in Pingyao, Shanxi. It was the first of the Shanxi piaohao, houses that moved money across the empire on paper drafts. A Qing writer described them: “Their methods are most precise, their people most honest and simple, and their credit the best known.”
The Pingyao houses had a saying: 宁可赔折腰，不让客吃亏. “Better to lose until our backs break than let a customer suffer a loss.”
Moving the Pole
Before he announced his new laws, the Qin reformer Shang Yang feared that the people would not believe him. He set up a pole three zhang tall at the south gate of the capital’s market and offered ten gold to anyone who moved it to the north gate.
People found this strange, and nobody moved it. He raised the reward to fifty. One man moved it and was paid fifty at once, “to show that there was no deceit.” Then the laws were issued. The story is in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, and it is known as 徙木立信, moving a pole to establish trust.
A Cart Without a Yoke Pin
Confucius said: “A person who is not trustworthy, I do not know how he can be of any use. A large cart without a yoke pin, a small cart without a collar pin, how can they move?” (Analects 2.22)
Asked what a state needs, Confucius named enough food, enough weapons and the trust of the people. If one had to go, he would give up the weapons first, then the food. “Since ancient times, all have died. Without trust, the people cannot stand.” (Analects 12.7)
Deadbeats
In July 2013, the Supreme People’s Court adopted rules for publishing a list of 失信被执行人, judgment debtors who have broken faith. These are people who are able to do what a court has ordered and do not. In everyday speech, they are called 老赖, deadbeats.
The court said that in cases from 2008 to 2012 where debtors had assets, more than 70 percent of them had evaded or resisted enforcement. By June 30, 2018, the courts had published 11.23 million entries. People on the list had been blocked from buying plane tickets 12.22 million times and high-speed train tickets 4.58 million times.