Abstract: Shen Congwen’s texts embody two aspects in literature and cultural writings:One was literal texts that expressed his cultural thinking,and the other was ethnographic text written with literary tools.Both of them pointed to the perception towards Xiangxi and its modern urban culture.Two types of text had distinctive ethnographic characteristics.The causes of characteristics of Shen Congwen’s ethnographical writing lied in a combination of internal and external sight in the life experiences which led to his cross-cultural relativism.This was also the inevitable result of Shen Congwen’s stylistic experiments for expressions.The combination between Shen Congwen’s literature creation with the characteristic of ethnographical writing and the characteristic of poetics was the important reason that Shen Congwen’s cultural thought,aesthetic thought,artistic thought and expression were so independent and special in modern Chinese.

Key words: Shen Congwen, ethnographical writing