Abstract: In many respects the development of towns in Zezhou, the south-eastern part of Shanxi, during the Ming and Qing periods, did not lag behind the Jiangnan area. There was a long history for township development, but the towns had very close relations with the villages. After their formation, the towns could not necessarily be spatially differentiated from the original villages. It could be said that“large villages became towns”, and the formation of townships took a long time. In order to understand the character of the village and town and their interrelationship it is important to understand what the inhabitants would call the locality and who they referred to as local people, not merely what outsiders or later observers saw the townships. As for the integral relations of village and town, it can be generalized as a “territorial community” with the she as its core rather than“marketing community”.