This study aims to explore the historical significance of the term ”Sick Man of East Asia” in the modem Chinese intellectual and cultural history. As well known, ”The West”, as the most significant ”Other”, has figured prominently in the modern Chinese intellectual discourse. The idea of ”Sick Man of East Asia” in particular has played an important role in the modern Chinese imagination of their national identity. It has long been regarded by many Chinese as an epithet ruthlessly imposed upon China by the Western imperialists to humiliate both China and the Chinese people, especially the poor physical quality of the Chinese people. However, this kind of understanding of this term is indeed ahistorical and full of distortions. As my research will point out, this term was initially utilized by the Western political discourse to describe the weak and corrupt condition of the Ch'ing Empire in the late 19(superscript th) century. At the time, many reform-minded Chinese intellectuals agreed with this political ”diagnosis” of the Ch'ing China and even frequently borrowed this term to stress the necessity of embracing radical reform programs. However, in the early 20(superscript th) century, when many Chinese came to feel extremely anxious about the decline of physical prowess of the Chinese people, Chinese thinkers, such as Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, invested new meaning to the term ”Sick Man of East Asia”-meaning all the Chinese people are seriously sick and weak beings-in order to stress the importance of the national body reform movement. In other words, the meaning of term was reinvented by the Chinese thinkers themselves to amplify the sense of national crisis in order to stimulate people's will to reform. Ironically, as time went on, the Chinese people came to regard this term as purely a contemptuous criticism on the Chinese body from the evil West, totally forgetting and ignoring the fact that the added meaning of this term is a historical product done by the Chinese thinkers in the early 20(superscript th) context and has little to do with the West. The term has therefore been appropriated time and again to mobilize and provoke xenophobia sentiments in the construction of modern Chinese collective identity. In particular, Many Chinese enthusiastically believe that victory in international sports games is the best way to ”wipe up” the national humiliation resulting from ”Sick Man of East Asia.” By showing the root of the ”imagined” national humiliation and analyzing the dramatic trajectory of how ”Sick Man of East Asia” has been manipulated by the modern Chinese nationalist discourse, this study reveals the complicated role that the West plays in the construction of modern Chinese identity and the ambivalent feeling of the modern Chinese people toward the Western culture.