Riding on the New Culture Movement tidal front, the intellectuals pursue new changes and hope to achieve the goal of cultural reconstruction by discarding the tradition, and even by transplanting the Western culture to China. In the beginning of pursuing modernization of China, Hu Shi starts the literary revolution. He believes the new-vernacular literature may reveal the new thought and the new spirit, the reason why new-vernacular literature is deemed “new” is because of its critique spirit when facing the environment of the era, and because of its abounding courage to pursue paradigm from the West. Hu Shi advocates the even shallow vernacular literature, revolts against the abstruse classical Chinese literature in antithetical style; He emphasizes the social practical effectiveness of the literature, and neglects the traditional function of expressing feelings and the social responsibility of propagandizing moral and social values. But if we explore at a deeper level, there’s quite some disparity between the anti-tradition he advocates and the relation between he himself and the tradition. This article is to examine Hu Shi’s literature theory which focuses primarily on commenting the poem, then attempt to sort out the fibre in him which is enlightened by the tradition, and explore the classical element in his argument of literature.