Abstract: With the rapid urbanization and the fierce democratization and revolutionization, Shanghai Xu Garden went through the process of being a private garden to a literati gathering garden, to a commercial amusement park, to a quasi-park by Jiangnan compradors and Jiangnan literati from 1883 to 1919. During this process, Jiangnan compradors became from artistic scholars to tasteful merchants to gentry merchants, while Jiangnan literati changed from artistic scholars to political literati. As a result, the reclusive keep-out-of-politics tradition of Jiangnan culture gradually gave its way to the secular keen-on-politics trend.

Key words: Xu Yuan, Jiangnan compradors, Jiangnan literati, reclusive, secular