How Much of a Chimera is Comparability? Reflections on Comparative Studies in Sinology Whenever I tell someone in Chinese Studies that my doctoral dissertation is about the relationship between Zhuangzi and two twentieth-century French writers who were fascinated with ancient China, I would see an expression of surprise, and sometimes, a good-naturedly skeptical look. I would then hasten to explain that I am not doing an anachronistic parallel comparison or a cause-and-effect literary influence study, and instead I am examining conceptual and theoretical interactions, i.e. to what extent the...