Abstract:The rural public space is not only the space for the public activities of the peasants,but also the place for the interaction and performance of the village community and state power. Taking the zhu’s ancestral temple of S village in northwest Zhejiang as an observation object,the article trys to explore the modern transformation of the ancestral temple as a traditional rural public space and its survival and development logic. The research finds that the inhabitants are not the passive respondents in the traditional public space encountering Chinese modern revolution and political movements,but are adept at incorporating political discourse into the decoration of the traditional public space. Therefore,the legitimacy of the existence of the space is continuously restored through meaning reconstruction. Public space filled with political symbols becomes a bearing field including articulation politics and cohesive identification. It strengthens the attributes of the space’s ideological tools and reproduces the legitimacy of political power. The case shows that traditional social symbols and modern political symbols can coexist and interact positively. Traditional things should be given a modern meaning rather than being abandoned. The three-dimensional components produced in space are not completely split but organically blended. The physical form and value of space have been transformed,but the latter far exceeds the former.