A Study of the Modern Chinese Intellectuals’Thought Process of Accepting the Western Culture Through Wang Tao’s Letters in the London Mission Society Press Period

As one of the first generation of Chinese modern intellectuals who opened their eyes to look at the world, Wang Tao’ attitude towards the western civilization was paradoxical considering his letters in the period of working in the London Mission Society Press. In his letters to his new friends in Shanghai he admitted that the western civilization had its own merits and praised strongly the western knowledge, but in his letters to his old friends who lived in his hometown Fuli he often attacked the western knowledge radically, and fell in deep blaming of himself for working for the westerners, presenting strong resistance to the western culture. On the one hand, this paradoxical attitude disclosed that Wang Tao took different strategy facing with different people having different understanding of the western culture;on the other hand, it showed that in the radical crash between the Chinese and the Western culture, Wang Tao and the other modern Chinese intellectuals continuously struggled with their conventional conceptions to accept the modern western science and technology, began the transformation form the conventional scholars to the modern intellectuals.