Abstract: This paper challenges the ecological and characteristic crises occurring in the existing rural areas in China, addressing the new requirements of developing Beautiful Villages, and discusses three aspects of the misunderstanding during the process of this development. It introduces the theory of Ecological Aesthetics, and proposes a conceptual framework based on clarifying the coupling elements and the interrelationship between ecological values and aesthetic experiences of rural landscape characteristics. From the perspective of spatial planning, the major research question is how to achieve ecological-aesthetic win-win situation via the planning of rural landscape characteristics. In order to achieve ecological-aesthetic dual objectives, this paper proposes a technical approach for the planning of rural landscape characteristics, centering on locality, diversity and services. In addition, this paper selects Dongtan at the Chongming Island as the case to explore how to deliver the theory in practice. It finally discusses the technical key points to apply it in the plan-making process, validates its feasibility, representativeness and generalization, through which new methods and paradigms are proposed for current plan-making and development of Beautiful Villages.