Abstract: In many periods of Chinese  cultural history, there were debates on literature(wen) and essence(zhi), but these debates took on a greater significance as they were extended and refreshed during the late Ming and the early Qing dynasties. First of all, the Manchu conquerors, who has been despised as an “inferior race,” brought a new life style to the people of China proper, and they aroused a lot ideological and social changes. Intellectuals had to rethink the traditional problem of “literature and essence” to face this new era. The Han concept of civilized people and barbarians, which had been connected with the geographical distinction between South and North, was seriously challenged and revised to fit the new rulers’concept of “great unity.” In terms of life style, whether to live extravagantly or unostentatiously was increasingly a metaphor for the tactics of domination, not an individual decision. This article will reveal the process of how the emperor and the intellectuals comprehended and expressed their ideas of “literature and essence” and analyze their complicated relationship in the early Qing Dynasty.