Using conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), this article examines how metaphors of emotion are constituted in the Chinese novel Fortress Besieged (Wei Cheng). The article makes two important contributions to CMT and cognitive linguistics: a) it investigates the universality thesis of CMT, by assessing its tenets in relation to the Chinese language; and b) it analyses the textual use of metaphors of emotion, by drawing from a corpus extracted from a full-length literary narrative. The article considers the role of culture and geography in the development of language-specific conceptual metaphors, and focuses on the emotions of happiness (喜), anger (怒), sadness (悲), and love (爱).