In the comparative cultural studies of the international academic field, “philosophy” and “religion” are two main categories for investigating the spiritual origins and the main characters of various cultures. Upon reexamining the foundational ideas for the humanistic and cultural studies in modern and contemporary China, one may find out that for most of the time, a majority of Chinese scholars have been following the notions of philosophy and religion imported from the West in analyzing the three main origins of traditional Chinese thought, i.e. Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Consequently, they either jumped to conclusions about the main cultural character of the three schools of thought — “philosophy” or “religion” became involved in the resulting academic disputes. Such an approach proves to be not helpful, either for revealing the true nature of traditional Chinese culture, or for expounding the epochal value of those excellent aspects of traditional Chinese culture. In the light of the above, this paper specifically considers the “homegrown” Taoism as an example for observation, i.e. by briefly reflecting upon the academic history of Taoist studies, to make a case for constructing the academic discourse for the study of Chinese Taoist culture.