文章通过检视中国中古文学中对老旧之物的态度，论述公元8、9世纪之交一种感伤文化的出现。这种感伤文化显示了中唐作家对人与物之间的模糊界限感到的强烈不安，也显示了在一个文化和思想发生深刻变化的时期自我与他者的复杂关系。它一方面预期了北宋的好古与集古精神，另一方面也揭示深受目的论影响的唐—宋转型叙事中存在的漏洞与裂痕。

By examining the descriptions of old things in medieval Chinese writings, this paper finds the appearance of a culture of sentimentality at the turn of the 9th century. This culture of sentimentality indicates a deep-seated anxiety about the blurred boundary, on a conceptual and ideological level, between humans and things, and bespeaks the complex dynamics in the relationship of self and other at a time of profound cultural and intellectual changes. It anticipates and yet remains profoundly different from the Northern Song antiquarianism, thus revealing gaps and fissures in the neat teleological narrative of the “Tang-Song transition.”