This article reflects on the methodological challenges and opportunities of 20 years of research on Chinese migrants abroad against a shifting background of global politics and academic institutions. It suggests that, while ethnography is always implicitly comparative, juxtaposition rather than comparison in time and space, within and outside the ‘field’, may be a better way of describing the cumulative working of ethnographic research. I reflect on three ethnographic moments whose significance only became clear in hindsight, with the benefit of juxtapositions with other experiences, both academic and non-academic.