Cultural Inheritance and Rural Construction

Abstract

Culture is the foundation of rural prosperity and plays various roles in rural construction. Cultural inheritance in rural culture includes a common content but also includes inheritance focused on subcategories and subregions. The requirements for content and inheritance are different in different types and regions of rural cultural inheritance. The contents of rural cultural inheritance include material aspects and nonmaterial aspects. Material aspects include regional landscape features and historical architecture, environmental factors and the historical cultural landscape with its prominent historical meanings and humanistic values. Nonmaterial aspects refer to spiritual culture, institutional culture, social norms, folk customs, and social awareness formed in the villages; it also refers to social values, modes of thinking and living, and means of production formed by residents throughout history. All this cultural content not only reflects rural regional appearance in the most direct and authentic way but also constitutes important cultural elements for the stable development of rural society and has a far-reaching influence on the entire countryside. Rural planning has previously consisted mostly of material or technical planning and has long lacked necessary attention under the background of the dualistic structure system of urban and rural planning. Without a sound rural planning theory, all rural construction plans originate from the concept and design approaches of urban planning. “This practice obviously ignores the peculiarity of villages, severs the connection between rural settlements and regional nature, economy and social culture and disregards the historical and cultural memory of villages.”1 In many regions, rural construction is misunderstood as demolitions and reconstructions; it does not consider the development of local cultural characteristics. Traditional culture is repeatedly relegated to an inferior place during this process. In the planning of rural construction, planning that ignores cultural elements of the village is imperfect. “Beautiful nostalgia” calls for attention to cultural elements in rural planning. As a designer, I must consider cultural elements in the planning of new rural construction, establish a sound system of rural cultural inheritance, and fundamentally solve the problem of how traditional villages face the loss of rural culture. Based on my participation in a rural construction project in Xinglong County, this paper studies the cultural inheritance in the construction of beautiful countryside, exploring the new paradigm of rural planning. Such topics are of great importance to improve the theoretical system of rural cultural inheritance and promote research on rural construction.