The aim of this paper is to explore the appropriate aesthetic meanings of leisure in Chinese literati's prose writings, both in the historical context of cultural transformations and in the artistic context of literature. The first step is to examine the multiple reasons of love of leisure life in the culture and society of the 16th and 17th Centuries China, at the dawn of modernity, when the Late Ming literati were standing at the crossroad of transformations under various impacts: the collapse of traditional social system and traditional value, the rise of Confucian merchants with great wealth and prosperity, the newly arrived European missionaries with Western technology, philosophy and religion. The second step is to analyse the aesthetic meanings of xian (literally, leisure or idleness) in Chinese literature, where xian, as one important category of beauty, is understood not only as a subjective feeling toward the life-world, or a mental attitude of being-in-the-world, but also as an ideal way of existence for all beings, including humans, nature and art works. The third step is, on the critical level, to point out, in this mode of leisure life, the crisis of indulging too much in material objects to the point of losing one's spiritual ambition. In the meanwhile, to find out the dynamism or creative energy of popular culture embedded in their leisure life which is deeply rooted in people's daily life and the everydayness of their life-world.