生意

生意 (shēngyì) puts together 生 (shēng, life, to generate) and 意 (yì, idea, intent). In classical usage the compound meant the stirring vitality of living things; poets used it for spring. The commercial sense grew from "livelihood," the activity that generates a life, and today 做生意 (zuò shēngyì, "do business") is the plainest way to say you run a business or trade for a living. A shop with customers streaming in has 生意兴隆 (shēngyì xīnglóng, "flourishing business"), the four-character blessing printed on red banners at every shop opening.

The other family of business words descends from 商 (shāng). The traditional account, repeated since the Han dynasty, holds that after the Shang dynasty fell to the Zhou around 1046 BCE, its displaced people took up itinerant trade to survive, and "Shang people" (商人 shāngrén) hardened into the word for merchant. Historians treat the etymology with caution; what is certain is that the character now anchors the whole commercial lexicon: 商业 (shāngyè, commerce), 商店 (shāngdiàn, shop), 商品 (shāngpǐn, goods), 商标 (shāngbiāo, trademark), and the verb 商量 (shāngliang, to talk terms, to discuss). Merchants ranked last in the Confucian four-class scheme of 士农工商 (scholars, farmers, artisans, merchants), a durable status anxiety that modern China's entrepreneurial culture has thoroughly, though not entirely, inverted.

公司 (gōngsī, company) is literally "public management," and the workday inside one runs on a compact set of verbs: 上班 (shàngbān, go to work) and 下班 (xiàbān, get off work), 开会 (kāihuì, hold or attend a meeting), 加班 (jiābān, work overtime, the word behind endless internet complaint), 出差 (chūchāi, go on a business trip), and 签合同 (qiān hétong, sign a contract). 甲方 and 乙方, "Party A" and "Party B" from the boilerplate of every Chinese contract, have escaped into slang: designers and agencies groan about their 甲方 the way English speakers groan about "the client," because Party A holds the money and therefore the taste.

Two easily confused pairs. 客户 (kèhù) is a business client or account; 顾客 (gùkè) is a walk-in retail customer, the one who is 上帝 ("god") in the service slogan 顾客就是上帝. And 老板 (lǎobǎn, boss) scales all the way down: the owner of a noodle stall is addressed as 老板 (or 老板娘 lǎobǎnniáng for a woman running the place), which makes it one of the most-spoken words of politeness in daily commercial life.

Nearly every money word carries the radical 贝 (bèi), the cowrie shell that served as currency in Shang and Zhou times: 赚 (zhuàn, to earn a profit), 赔 (péi, to lose money, to compensate), 财 (cái, wealth), 贵 (guì, expensive), 便宜 (piányi, cheap, the exception that proves you should check), 账 (zhàng, account), 购 (gòu, to purchase). The oracle-bone economy is fossilized in the writing system: three thousand years after the last cowrie changed hands, every transaction in the language still passes through the shell.

The working pairs: 赚钱 (zhuànqián, make money) against 赔钱 (péiqián) or 亏本 (kuīběn, lose on the capital); 挣钱 (zhèngqián) is earning by labor, wages pulled in by effort, while 赚钱 leans toward profit from a deal. Bargaining is 讨价还价 (tǎojià huánjià, "demand a price, return a price"), and it remains standard practice in markets, though not in chain stores. The learner's toolkit: 多少钱 (how much?), 太贵了 (too expensive!), 便宜一点 (a little cheaper), and the walk-away, which is the strongest phrase of all. The discount system runs on 打折 (dǎzhé), covered on the number-system page: the digit names the tenths of the price you still pay, so 打五折 is half price.

The unit of Chinese business culture is not the meeting but the 饭局 (fànjú), the purposeful dinner: 饭 is food, 局 is a set-up, an arranged game. The word itself admits that the meal has structure and stakes. Seating is hierarchical (the host faces the door, the guest of honor sits at the host's right), the toasting order follows rank, and the fight over who pays is ritual theater with a predetermined winner. 应酬 (yìngchou) names the whole category of obligatory social-business engagements, and complaining about one's 应酬 while never missing one is a professional norm. The related etiquette machinery, 请客 (treating), 敬酒 (toasting), and 面子 (face), each has its own page in this guide, and all of it runs on 关系 (guānxi), the web of cultivated reciprocal relationships that business Chinese assumes as infrastructure.

Two physical rituals matter on first contact. Business cards (名片 míngpiàn) are exchanged with both hands, received with both hands, read on the spot, and placed on the table, never pocketed unread. And the general-purpose honorific for a counterpart's company is 贵公司 (guì gōngsī, "your esteemed company"), the same 贵 that means "expensive," doing polite work. When talks go well, the closing verb is 合作 (hézuò, to cooperate): 希望我们合作愉快 ("may our cooperation be a happy one") is the standard clink line over the final glass.