Objective To investigate the health status of residents in rural areas of China as well as their needs for health service, and to explore the effective way to improve the health status of rural residents so as to provide a basis for the training of community healthcare professionals. Methods Using the method of stratified cluster random sampling, we investigated 4190 rural residents from 1200 families, which were sampled from 13 provinces of China according to the geographical distribution. Results The 2-week prevalence rate was 27.9%. 32.7% of the patients saw a doctor, and 20.5% did not take any measures. Among those who did not take any measures, 78.4% thought their illness was mild and did not need any treatment; and the second reason for no treatment was lack of money (accounting for 36.5%). The prevalence rate of chronic diseases during the past half year was 24.9%, among which lumbar and leg pain was the most prevalent (accounting for 7.8%), followed by hypertension (accounting for 5.5%). The rates of visiting a doctor were 43.9% and 61.5% in township level and village level health institutions, respectively, during the past one year. 70.0% of the patients looked for treatment, 8.4% chose to ignore, and 20.8% took medicine by themselves. Among those who visited a doctor, 61.0% preferred hospitals near their houses, and 34.0% preferred those with lower expenses. More than half of the residents (accounting for 57.3%) did not have any physical examination during the past 3 years, and 28.3% did have a check-up but not regularly. Among the rural residents investigated, 64.2% obtained health care knowledge from television, newspapers, books and radio broadcasting, and 67.3% were desirous of regular physical examination. 56.3% and 33.1% of the rural residents considered the skill of the healthcare professionals in town-level institutions to be acceptable and satisfactory, respectively; and 61.7% and 24.6% evaluated the skill of those in village-level institutions to be acceptable and satisfactory, respectively. Conclusion The health status of rural residents is not optimistic, and their health behaviors need to be correctly guided, and the medical facilities and healthcare service quality of primary healthcare institutions should be improved. It is suggested that the government and medical colleges take the responsibility to train healthcare professionals for the primary health care in rural areas.