 In many schools of Western philosophy and psychology, emotions are understood as inner subjective feelings that are sharply contrasted with the intellectual faculties of the mind. In Chinese philosophy, however, emotions are not fully explained by inner subjective feelings or inexplicable passions. Rather, they are understood as interactive, responsive, and holistic affectivity that plays broad psychological, cognitive, and moral roles in one’s understanding of the world (its objective reality, nature of things, and their situations and circumstances) and one’s dispositions and reactions to external stimulation. The present essay discusses the diverse conceptual dimensions, psychological orientations and moral significance of emotions discussed in major philosophical texts of ancient China from the early sixth to the late first centuries BCE. Specifically, it focuses on how early Chinese philosophers explained the nature of emotions and how they identified and categorized emotions. The essay consists of the following sections. First, general philosophical orientations of Chinese philosophy will be compared and contrasted with Western approaches to emotions. Second, early Chinese notions of emotions will be identified through the lens of qing (情), a unique Chinese notion of affectivity (or onto-affectivity) that includes such semantic elements as essence, nature, reality, disposition, desire, and feelings. Third, the philosophical interpretations and the semantic dimensions of qing in early Chinese philosophy will be discussed. Fourth, terms and lists of emotions in early Chinese texts will be analyzed to illustrate how Chinese philosophers categorized and individuated emotions. Fifth, early Chinese philosophical texts and their theories of emotions will be surveyed to explain how emotions and the broad domains of the affective mind (such as innate dispositions, psychological inclinations, subjective feelings, and desires) are discussed in ancient Chinese texts.