Flexible selling was a kind of real estate(especially land) dealing form which different from pawning and ultimate selling in traditional Chinese society. It was different from pawning for it transferred the real estate’s ownership; it was different from ultimate selling for it reservesed real estate’s redemption right by the sacrifice of lower price to ultimate selling. Flexible selling had two kinds of follow―up procedures: supplemental payment and redemption. The supplement payment was a complete liquidation of trade relation by the seller compensating the buyer on the base of full price, and the redemption was a form by which the seller paid the buyer in original price to redeem the subject matter. Among them, the discount tended to cause more dispute which made flexible selling became one of attractive phenomena in Ming and Qing dynasty. Facing frequent flexible selling disputes, Ming and Qing government tried to put flexible selling into a dual pattern of pawing and ultimate selling through promulgating stable laws, and meanwhile eliminating the root of flexible selling disputes through counsel and punishment by judge and announcement. But as a kind of spontaneous, non-government and informal system, the rising of flexible selling had deep social root. In middle and later Ming dynasty, politics was out of control, the widening gap between poor and rich, and land price’s frequent fluctuation all lead to the uncertainty of discount’s reference price; and justice officials’ sentence means which was based on the value idea around Confucian teachings made flexible selling to change from “illegal status” to “common status”, which played an important role in the formation and development of flexible selling. But from another point of view, justice officials’ solution for flexible selling disputes was a result from the idea of fairness and justice in Chinese traditional cultural thinking, and justice officials’ human principle they followed in litigation added rich content to the meaning of human social fairness value.

Flexible selling was a kind of real estate(especially land) dealing form which different from pawning and ultimate selling in traditional Chinese society. It was different from pawning for it transferred the real estate’s ownership; it was different from ultimate selling for it reservesed real estate’s redemption right by the sacrifice of lower price to ultimate selling. Flexible selling had two kinds of follow―up procedures: supplemental payment and redemption. The supplement payment was a complete liquidation of trade relation by the seller compensating the buyer on the base of full price, and the redemption was a form by which the seller paid the buyer in original price to redeem the subject matter. Among them, the discount tended to cause more dispute which made flexible selling became one of attractive phenomena in Ming and Qing dynasty. Facing frequent flexible selling disputes, Ming and Qing government tried to put flexible selling into a dual pattern of pawing and ultimate selling through promulgating stable laws, and meanwhile eliminating the root of flexible selling disputes through counsel and punishment by judge and announcement. But as a kind of spontaneous, non-government and informal system, the rising of flexible selling had deep social root. In middle and later Ming dynasty, politics was out of control, the widening gap between poor and rich, and land price’s frequent fluctuation all lead to the uncertainty of discount’s reference price; and justice officials’ sentence means which was based on the value idea around Confucian teachings made flexible selling to change from “illegal status” to “common status”, which played an important role in the formation and development of flexible selling. But from another point of view, justice officials’ solution for flexible selling disputes was a result from the idea of fairness and justice in Chinese traditional cultural thinking, and justice officials’ human principle they followed in litigation added rich content to the meaning of human social fairness value.

Flexible selling custom, Supplement payment, Redemption