Abstract

YangZhou is famous as a classical cultural city that was the starting point, cultural and economic center in China for a long time. The unique civilization of YangZhou has played an important role in the Chinese cultural history. The city had possessed highs and lows, waxed and waned several times. YangZhou was businessmen's heaven, academics' garden, workers and peasants' dream land when country was boom. Instead, the war made the city became a deserted place for country's decline. However, YangZhou had resurgenced with the country everytime until modern times. In a time of change of Qing Dynasty to Republican period, YangZhou's intellectuals begin to the metamorphosis of classicality into modern. The changing process implied the destiney of whole Chinese intellectual——they always fit the times with unconsciousness instead of made an epoch. Intellectual of modern YangZhou inherited the classical characteristic and showed the groping process of whole group in China.