Abstract: There are a large number of traditional villages in China, which are often in a rigid development situation due to the constraints of protection and utilization. How to create active state traditional villages with the symbiosis of ‘human-land’ has become the difficulty of rural revitalization. From the perspective of living transmission, this paper analyzes the characteristics and causes of the inactivation of traditional villages, analyzes the problems existing in the protection, such as the control of authoritative discourse, the elitism of value recognition and rupture of human land relationship, and puts forward that the protection of traditional villages should be transformed into an activation strategy dominated by community practice, the localization of value cognition and the continuation of human-land relationship, so as to provide theoretical reference for the sustainable development of village heritage in China.