This study explores travels in China of two writers, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Lee Dongkok based on Lu Hsun's critical contemplation on Chinese Characteristics by Arthur H. Smith and the authenticity of place in humanistic geography. In the early 1920s, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, an oversea correspondent for the Osaka Mainichi newspaper and Lee Dongkok, a contributing writer to Kaebyok on Chinese issues showed the subject pertaining to perception of others and self-awareness based on their sense of place in China including the SiHu in Hangzhou. Spatial experiences of Akutagawa and Lee Dongkok differ from those symbols in the media of the empire and colonies or travel industries. In the empire, travellers had books and guidebooks on China to explore the country as an individual hobby or for fun and then, the subject should experience the place according to imaginative geography provided in books on Chinese studies or railroad guidebooks. Memories of China and Chinese people will only be the reproduction of imaginative geography and symbols already available. In this way, China as place is reduced to a subject of travellers' collection and will be subject to ‘placelessness’. Akutagawa attempted to provide contemplation of travels in the empire at that time. Akutagawa's sensitiveness and ‘unpleasant’ senses do not reproduce Chinese symbols presented in the media and railroad guidebooks but reflect Japanese attitudes to others in China. This sensitive subject tries to contemplate the empire's perspective and discover the world of daily life in China while detecting the political characteristics of culture in this world of daily life. However, on the other hand, ‘I’, a sensitive subject will recognize the situation where one cannot easily escape from the empire's perspective and suffer from more nervous obsession and compulsion. The attitude of “observation” of Lee Dongkok, just like Akutagawa's, will discover the world of daily life in Modern China since the May Fourth Revolution and find the strong political characteristics in its culture. Lee Dongkok understands and faces spatial attributes based on “observation” as an attitude as well as contemplation of the past and the present of a relevant spatial subject. The “observation” is rather far away from discourses which totalitarianize and emotionally disregard China from a perspective of an outsider without any effort to meet the fundamentals of the country. Also, the attitude of “observation” focuses on how Chinese people perceive themselves and this reflects how modern China considers their past, present, and future. Lee Dongkok highlights the political characteristics of change to further reflect their own culture and practice rather than holding onto the old Han culture. His understanding of China that the political characteristics of cultural change are related to the reality of the Chosun Dynasty as a colony further develops self-awareness of Chosun as a colony. This provides an interesting reference system to understand cultural nationalism presented in the 《Kaebyok》 in the early 1920s. The two writers maintained their sensitive senses in a place called China after the May Fourth Revolution to contemplate the past and the present of this place while at the same time, trying to reflect their own identity issues. In this way, self-contemplation as well as facing others at the same time leads to more serious contemplation of their own countries.