A Study on the Path of Narrative Renewal of Traditional Villages: A Case of Shawan Ancient Town, Guangdong, China

Abstract

Traditional villages are a valuable for their historical and cultural heritage, and have long been the focus of academic research regarding their protection and renewal methods in the face of increasing urbanization. In the village renewal model, the continuation and regeneration of cultural context is the core issue. This paper aims to construct the updated narrative text of Shawan Ancient Town on the basis of narrative rules and methods, while also exploring how to generate the conservation and renewal strategies based on the narrative text. Drawing on the concepts and methods of narratology and based on the cultural background and current conditions of Shawan Ancient Town’s architectural heritage, this paper takes “narrative in terms of theme, clue, path, and material” as the basic framework to construct the narrative text in the context of traditional village renewal. Then four aspects, such as “base combing, interface integration, patch symbiosis, and debris collection”, are used to update the methods of the spatial situation of individual places. Additionally, multiple construction forms are explained, generating a historic, interesting, and experiential strategy for the protection and renewal of ancient towns. This study demonstrates logical thinking from the construction of narrative text to the generation of renewal strategies from a narrative perspective while deepening the typical research on the traditional village narrative renewal mode. It is advantageous to build a protection mechanism for historical and cultural villages, and explore a path to protect, inherit, and promote the cultural heritage of villages based on China’s current situation.