This essay explicitly sets out to explain how Ezra Pound and Sergei Eisenstein use the Chinese sign to create an aesthetics of ”shock” based on the dc-familiarizing character of the Chinese sign. In addition to a detailed explanation of how Pound and Eisenstein construct two kinds of ”imagism' out of the Chinese character, I also offer an ”ideological” reading of their theories of ”ideogrammic art.” Moreover, unlike other recent critics (Fleming: 1989, Ming Xie: 1998, Makin: 2003) interested in the Western uses of the Chinese sign, I do not insist that Pound and Eisenstein were necessarily wrong about their intuitions regarding Chinese signification. Rather, I focus on how they managed to create coherent theories of avant-garde art based on their insights into what Roland Barthes called the ”third term,” or metaphysical aspect of the image.