What Diderot referred to was surely the "Chinoiserie" created by Europeans themselves, an accident of history which in the past had expressed people's yearnings but was incomprehensible, and which by then appeared patently ridiculous and hardly worth comprehending.
這裡指的毋寧是歐洲人親手營造出來的「中國情調」，一樁過去充滿嚮往、無法理解，現在又不屑於理解、而看來分明荒謬的歷史意外。