The concept that peri-operative treatment could improve long-term survival of esophageal cancer patients has been universally accepted, including radiation alone, chemotherapy alone, and chemoradiation. The most controversial therapy is perioperative chemotherapy. Here we review the published literatures for reference. The result shows that perioperative chemotherapy is effective for esophageal cancer patients, especially for the so-called chemo-sensitive patients, and the preferred delivering time is before surgery. According to the current data, it is still unclear whether the efficacy of neoadjuvant chemotherapy is inferior to that of neoadjuvant chemoradiation.