This essay focuses on the ceremonial salutations, such as kowtow and standing as respect, for further understanding of the relationship between political order and hermeneutics of canons in ancient China, and figuring out the characteristics of so-called Chinese hermeneutics. I would like to discuss how the ancient Chinese Emperorship made efforts to monopolize the ritual symbols, including their languages and meanings. The end of such an action was to create the priority of the prince-minister relationship among all human relations in any situation and context. In this essay, I discuss how the meanings of ceremonial salutations were transformed because of Confucians' discourses. In pre-Chin, kowtow was not considered as a kind of salutation performed by the subordinates. The performance of kowtow happened between hosts and guests. After the Han age, kowtow was interpreted as a salutation for expressing humble feeling and obedience to superiors, for reproducing the difference of status. Therefore, in the Confucian theories, it was not allowed that the lords kowtow to their subordinates. In other words, the meaning of kowtow was transformed from a situational salutation to relational one, symbolizing differences of status. In the debate of ceremonial salutations in the Six-Dynasty age, all debaters presumed the priority of the superiority of the lords, we could cal1 this principle a kind of ‘tacit knowing’, which did not result directly from the Confucian canons. The Confucian agents followed the present institutions, choosing the necessary canonical languages in canons to construct their ideal political discourses.