This research project examines how metaphors and culturemes work in Chinese, paying special attention to figurative language, aiming at finding a perspective which enables us to understand them and helps us in the case of intercultural communication. In this study, along the lines of Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen’s theory of conventional figurative language, as well as Pamies’ concept of cultureme (2007, 2017), we observe that phraseology often represents linguo-cultural specificity. In this project we explain the concept of cultureme and we illustrate it by means of a typology of subclasses, like animal, plant, mineral, chromatic and numeric culturemes, showing their variety, motivation, development, and application. It is demonstrated here that the same cultureme can involve several symbolisms, either positive or negatives ones; we also demonstrate that culturemes suffer from value evolution; however, some have always been appreciated and involving purely positive values, whereas others have just involved pejorative values.