Abstract: The types of rural areas in China are diverse and rich in connotation. Some of them span the county administrative units and are concentrated into large-scale areas. After a long historical evolution, they have formed relatively complete rural settlements and regional cultural characteristics. Taking the characteristic village belt of South Taihu Lake in Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province as an example, this paper focuses on combing and revealing the division of evolution stages of large-scale rural areas, the extraction of influencing factors, the internal evolution characteristics, and motivation mechanism of each factor through field survey, historical textual research, and spatial diagram. The research can provide a basis for further exploring the connotation and formation mechanism of characteristic elements in these rural areas.