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Lu You, a famous poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, lived in his hometown of rural areas in eastern Zhejiang for a long time. Among Lu You's massive surviving poems, 60 to 70 percent are related to life in his hometown. Focus on interpreting Lu You's poems, using his eyes to observe the rural social life in eastern Zhejiang, and showing the "rural world" in his mind. Although it is not auspicious, it is extremely precious. By analyzing the case of Lu You's "Rural World", it is shown that: Lu You's rural life is a living model of an upper-middle-level rural apartment in rural eastern Zhejiang; the scholar class represented by Lu You played multiple and complex roles in rural social life; the rich and colorful rural life perceived and described by Lu You and the difficult livelihood of the people provide, to a certain extent, several fulcrums for us to rely on when imagining the "Song Dynasty countryside".

In recent years, driven by tourism, the rural commercial settlements in the south of the Yangtze River, which once played an important role in the historical development of our country, have once again attracted widespread attention. Over the past seven or eight hundred years, catalyzed by various factors such as technological progress and population pressure, agricultural production in the Jiangnan region has gradually shifted to a professional economy represented by the cotton and mulberry industry. The demand for commodity exchange with the outside world has continued to expand, prompting the creation of a large number of large and small business activity centers dependent on the professional economy in rural areas, and ultimately presented a unique landscape with dotted markets and dazzling culture. This formation mechanism and economic foundation of Jiangnan towns not only standardized their transportation network, structural layout, town shape, market architecture, and industry characteristics, but also affected people's living customs and cultural mentality. In modern times, as the traditional rural economy has gone away, except for a few that have been transformed into cultural parks with the theme of "traditional Jiangnan towns," what kind of development prospects will a large number of towns in the Jiangnan region face has become a brand new question that people in this region must answer. The above is what this book attempts to introduce to readers in relatively popular language.

This book is the latest research work on the cities of the Song Dynasty by Bao Weimin, professor of the History Department of Renmin University of China and 2012 "Yangtze River Scholar Distinguished Professor". On the basis of summarizing the research on the urban history of the Tang and Song Dynasties, this book discusses the scale, type and characteristics of cities in the Song Dynasty, urban management system, market, tax system, municipal construction, population and culture and other issues. It has many new insights and is an original study of cities in the Song Dynasty.