This thesis is intended to examine the controversy over Li shang-yin`s journey to Jiang Xiang(江鄕) between the positivism of the majority and the negativism of the minority and therefrom deduce a reasonable conclusion. To resume the story of Li`s life at this stage, he took Grand Rhetoric Examination(博學宏辭科) only to fail. A detailed explanation of his failure is mentioned in a letter Presented to Scholar Tao(與陶進土書). With the lapse of a year, he was appointed a collator(校書郞) in the Imperial Library, which brought him with it the $quot;full ninth rank, upper division(正九品上階).$quot; Soon, to his great disappointment, he was transferred to Hong-nong(弘農) to be the sheriff(尉) of the district, where he offended a superior official Sun Qin(孫欽) by arbitrarily changing the sentence of a prisoner out of his sense of justice and benevolence toward the prisoner. The incurrence of his senior`s displeasure put him suspended from his duties, which he soon could resume thanks to the conincidental replacement of Sun Qin by Yao He(姚合), a great poet and scholar with splended family background. Li`s footprints in the next two years, during which the above-mentioned trip may or may not have been taken, are not clear enough to appease the contradictory argument between positivists and negativists, both of whom base their contentions on references to that region in some of his poems and proses, which are hard, if not impossible, to date. A close analysis thereof will at once lead to the rationality of positivism and the absurdity of negativism, whereby confirming the soundness of positivists` judgment.