Grammatical Metaphor (GM) is a phenomenon arising from the interaction of semantics and lexico-grammar. Therefore, it occurs in the expression of both ideational and interpersonal meanings. Ideational GM is mainly deployed in written texts, while interpersonal GM is frequently observed in spoken discourse. Previous studies on the phenomenon focus their discussion on ideational GM and the use of GM in English. This paper explores the use of interpersonal GM in spoken Chinese. The paper develops a framework for the identification and categorisation of interpersonal GM in the language. On the basis of the framework, a large corpus of spontaneous conversation is analysed to reveal how different types of interpersonal GM are distributed. The analysis shows that spoken Chinese has a preference for certain types of metaphorical expression. This paper also investigates the relationship between interpersonal GM in spoken Chinese and its immediate context of situation. It demonstrates how the deployment of interpersonal GM is affected by the topic of conversation and the social status between speaker and hearer.