The article deals with the analysis of the phenomenon of replacing legal formulas of the Western contractual tradition with culturally marked expressions in the text of Chinese contracts. The relevance of the work is determined by China’s active participation in international business cooperation. The purpose of this study is to identify and systematize the main methods of the substitution, as well as to describe the cultural and linguistic foundations of the phenomenon. The empirical material for this research comprises Chinese business contracts concluded in Mainland China. The territories of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan have been consciously excluded, as the commercial documentation in these regions possesses distinctive characteristics that warrant a more thorough examination. This research is based on the concept of metaphor as a cognitive mechanism described by G. Lakoff and M. Jhonson, as well as on a number of works by Chinese and Russian researchers. The methodological framework of the study comprises comparative, linguacultural, and discursive approaches. In this research we have established that one of the main mechanisms for replacing legal formulas is metaphorization. The findings of the work can be applied in translation practice and in teaching intercultural business communication. This study offers further research prospects, including the expansion of the corpus through the inclusion of contracts from other sectors and regions, namely Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, and the regional economic zones of Mainland China.