As two of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Chinese history, culture, and thoughts, Lu Xun and Hu Shi were opposite in character, but they both deserve respect and appreciation in their own ways. With their divergent stances, experience, and styles, they were prone to labelling effect in the subsequent fierce struggles between the Kuomingtang and the Communists. A look into their trajectories in the political and intellectual realms for over half a century, thus, may offer some insights in terms of the history of scholarship. This article does not aim to review Lu Xun and Hu Shi's lives and contributions, but to examine how these two cultural giants were understood and interpreted by readers of different periods, stances, disciplinary backgrounds, and deportments and how the political upheavals of the time were embodied in all this. The article is divided into five parts: "Materialized commemoration and assessment", "The gathering and scattering of book collections", "The story of the complete works collection", "Literati in the eyes of politicians", and "Researchers' works".