In the second issue of Journal of Tsinghua University (PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES EDITION), Zhao Shiyu proposed that "the New Jiangnan history" is an attempt to tell the history of how the water towns of Jiangnan area became land. The discussion on this topic usually happened among historical geography scholars and the economic history scholars, but the questions about how the people evolved amid environmental changes, and how the society was constructed and changed have not been emphasized by the historians; Some anthropologists have explored these questions on the case-by-case level, but they still need further study. The author tries to regard the structural process of Jiangnan society from the East Jin and Southern Dynasties to the present as a process from a discrete society to an integrated society. This process not only clearly shows the geographical landscape of traditional Jiangnan or Yangtze River Delta, but also highlights the active behavior of people.