Interactions between Chinese and Western philosophies and philosophers have been greatly transformed and enhanced by Roger T. Ames. In recent years, Ames’s work has been mainly associated with Confucian thought, although his influence is far more foundational than this categorization suggests. According to some critics, his work mostly consists of an “inventive” fusion of Chinese (-inspired) thought with (primarily) American pragmatism. Geir Sigurðsson presents a corrective. “Explorative” and “experimental” are more appropriate adjectives for him to describe Ames’ endeavor. Moreover, we might better understand Ames through appreciating his “Daoism”. Drawing on the notion of “genuine pretending,” Sigurðsson points to the strategic elements of both Confucian thought and Ames’s own adaptation of it: “A Confucian junzi has a mission, namely, to construct and maintain a functional society, and that mission requires strategies… [which are] quite cunning or crafty in the sense of knowing what detours must be taken to fulfill the mission.” In this way we might understand Ames and his collaborative projects with Henry Rosemont as such: “Henry Rosemont would count as zheng 正, ‘straightforward,’ while Roger Ames would rather be characterized as ji 奇, or to use his own translation, ‘surprising’.”