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Abstract:: China’s modern transformation and national enlightenment were wrapped in the worldwide waveof urbanization. Modern Chinese intellectuals, who were still living in a state of unsettledness in the urbansociety, began to get involved into the social observation and criticism with the aspiration for carrying outenlightenment. Proceeding from the image of urban strangers depicted in Lu Xun’s Wild Grass, this paperanalyzes the image of citizens and urban ethics in this book concerning the real space of the city and probes intoLu Xun’s observation and reflection on the space where the grass roots citizens lived in the early urban society.There are a group of strangers in Wild Grass that can be easily ignored. They are ubiquitous, forming a restrictingforce over Lu Xun as a fighter in the ideological battlefield; their gossips and arguments constitute for them adaily life strategy; and they form a group who are alienated due to their worship of material success and power.Lu Xun’s criticism of such a type of strangers suggests that he attached more importance to the observationand discovery of“ people” in urban life at the spiritual level in his urban writings and thus established a type ofurban citizen criticism intended to stimulate the consciousness of modern citizenship.