As an important means to promote rural development, rural tourism has attracted more and more attention from scholars. In order to further deepen the theoretical and practical aspects of rural tourism research, this paper adopts the method of literature research and CiteSpace software as a tool to collect CSSCI database from 1998 to 2017. Or the literature with the theme of "rural tourism"should be scientifically measured. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The research subject has changed from the first-level research with tourism as the core to the second-level research with rural as the core;(2) the research scholars and scientific research institutions are independent and lack of communication; and (3) the research area mainly concentrates on Tourism in Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi, which has developed earlier, natural resources and humanities. Landscape-rich areas. In the future research process, we should strengthen communication and cooperation among different regions, scientific research institutions and scholars, stand tall and realistic, and provide theoretical reference and practical summary for the development of rural tourism.