Abstract: Three years before Arthur Waley translated Hanshan’s 27 poems into English in 1954, the French scholar Georges Margouliès had paid special attention to Hanshan and his poems in his Histoire de la Littérature Chinoise: Poésie and analyzed contributions Hanshan had made to the development of poetry in the early Tang period. Since the 1970s Hanshan and his poems have become one of French sinologists’ research focuses due to their close relations with Buddhism. The researches on Hanshan by French sinologists have been made great progress ever since, and their significance to contemporary French thought and culture is mainly on aspects of philosophy, language, literature and life.

Key words: Hanshan , spread , contemporary France , thought , culture