The doubts about reading an early Chinese text like Zhuangzi with French writers whose works are approached through criticisms totally soaked in (post-)structuralist theories, as well as the insistence in Chinese Studies on historical context and the tradition of textual commentaries that refuse to gel with the free-flowing pan-nutritional fluid of Western literary theories, have made me think more than ever about what “comparison” precisely is, how comparability is important to it, and why it is a particularly difficult issue in Chinese Studies done in Western academia.