Much has been written in the last decades about the (non-)existence of metaphor in Chinese ancient literature and rhetoric, about the elusive “evocative motif” (xing 興), not even considering the endless debates over the problematic triad fu 賦 bi 比 xing 興 since it was inherited from the exegesis of the Shijing 詩經 in the Han dynasty. Far from wanting to participate in those controversies, but considering that Chinese literary criticism matured and flourished during the Early Medieval period, this paper will rather attempt to shed light on some distinctive and significant wordings and instances of comparisons that have often been regarded as inconsistent, or at least puzzling, by modern readers. When tenor and vehicle (ground and figure) seem to switch parts in illustrative taxonomies of metaphors or simile, where cases of linguistic lability or semantic ambiguity occur, some inherent but otherwise relevant factors – such as categorical correspondences (lei 類), and the crucial concept of “sensible things/things of the outer world” (wu 物) – may be unveiled which are deeply interlinked with and impacting analogical tropes and correlations.