Guidelines for the industrial development of historic villages in China based on resource potential evaluation: 14 cases in the Guangzhou and Foshan Area, Guangdong Province

ABSTRACT Villages around the world are gradually disappearing. Their cultural heritage needs to be not only protected but also transformed into an opportunity to develop historic villages. With the support of national policies, the conservation and development of historic villages have improved in China. In this study, a resource potential evaluation system and the associated criteria for the conservation of historic villages are established. Fourteen historic villages with different rates of development in the Guangzhou and Foshan Area, Guangdong province, China, are quantitatively evaluated, and the resource advantages and deficiencies of each village are analyzed. Furthermore, to identify a suitable development direction for historic villages, the various types of historic villages and their resource potentials are summarized, and corresponding development guidelines are posited. Graphical Abstract


Introduction
Historic villages are a manifestation of the wisdom of farming civilizations; they form the historical foundation of various nationalities and contain rich historical and cultural marks and natural ecological landscapes. However, villages around the world are gradually disappearing (Vaishar et al. 2021), with common problems being high rental vacancy rates, deferred infrastructure maintenance, vandalism, and low property market value (Ryberg-Webster 2016). Historic villages in China form the world's largest village cultural heritage. A series of national policies, such as Beautiful Villages, Urban-Rural Coordination, and Rural Revitalisation, has improved the conservation of historic villages. These historic villages are part of the cultural heritage and need to be not only protected but also developed (Ryberg-Webster 2016; Cao, Hu, and Cao 2013). "Adaptive re-use" of heritage buildings have paved the way for conversion of private residences into shops or other services (Jones, Bui, and Ando 2020). The cataloguing and promotion of rural architecture have contributed to creating jobs by stimulating new economic activity (Cano, Garzon, and Sanchez-Soto 2013). Researchers have examined considering new, creative, and even radical approaches that respond to the challenges of urban shrinkage (Ryberg-Webster 2016), shifting focus from the materiality of heritage to its role in sustainable development, thereby focusing the attention on the role of civic engagement (Verdini, Frassoldati, and Nolf 2017).
Extensive and in-depth studies on the development of historic villages have been reported in the literature, generally from such perspectives of rural revitalisation as cultural connotations (Zheng 2019;Chen, Huang, and Wang 2018), the integration of urban and rural relations (Peng and Lu 2009), regional functions (Liu, Li, and Lu 2008), the development of rural tourism industry (Guo and Sun 2016;Jung et al. 2020;Zhang 2019;Burns and Sancho, 2003), as well as the construction and conservation of the villages themselves (Zeng et al. 2019).
Village development and conservation are often difficult to balance and are affected by many factors. Therefore, the process of village development cannot be driven solely by its own internal forces but requires a comprehensive role of the government, market, and society (Shan, Tian, and Gao 2015). For example, harmony between the people and their environment, the coordinated operation of various elements and the active participation of local residents are reported to be the principles of village development in Slovenia (Koscak 1998). The dynamic development model of "new city metabolism" combined with a real-time model to dynamically evaluate the development status of a village has also been applied to identify factors that can drive the sustainable development of a village (Xu, Yang, and Hou 2020;Levine et al. 2008).
Tourism development is as an opportunity to stimulate the economic development of villages (Kim and Lee 2020;Gavrilă-Paven 2015); this, in turn, is conducive to the spread and development of traditional settlement culture and helps to achieve the sustainable development of historic villages (De Azeredo Grünewald 2002;Tucker 2001). Li developed a conceptual model to examine the associations between quality-based factors (e.g., perceived value, historical authenticity, experience quality, and administrative quality) and either intention to travel or attitude toward preservation (Li et al. 2019). Zhang identified the relationships among the following factors: cross-cultural awareness, tourist experience, authenticity, tourist satisfaction, and acculturation (Zhang et al. 2018). Fois explored a historic rural craft tradition as the focus of economic development in a historic rural village (Fois et al. 2019). Jacobsen developed a unique model capturing antecedents of place attractiveness in tourism hotspot crowding contexts (Jacobsen, Iversen, and Hem 2019). However, if the roles of the multiple involved parties are not clearly defined, it may lead to adverse effects such as conflicts of interest and the disappearance of traditional characteristics (Schiller 2001). Rural life should co-exist with tourism activities (Zhao et al. 2011). The joint participation of the government, enterprises and the public is a key factor in the sustainable development of village tourism (Guo and Sun 2016;Weng and Peng 2014;Dewi 2014).
The resource potential of villages refers to the total energy transformed from potential influencing factors to practical competitiveness in the process of conservation and utilization and development of historic villages. The evaluation of the potential for rural development has received academic attention. For example, Yang Xiu analyzed five factors potentially affecting rural development, namely industry, ecology, humanities, public service development and external connections, and constructed a multilevel rural development potential evaluation system . Studies on historic village evaluation have mainly focused on conservation efforts (Huang, Li, and Xiao 2021), tourism development potential (Wang 2020;Akın et al. 2015), and the identification of historic villages (Ni et al. 2015). Few studies have examined the development potential evaluation of historic villages. For example, Songul Akin (2015) used questionnaires to interview villagers when studying the tourism development potential of Cayonu village in Turkey, and concluded that historical heritage, agricultural production, food culture and local characteristics are important evaluation factors for tourism development potential (Akın et al. 2015). In a study of the sustainable development potential of historical towns in Thailand, Doosadee Thaitakoo (2006) constructed a table of factors that contribute to development potential, including 24 factors such as location, accessibility, facilities, cultural heritage, market environment, and development space (Thaitakoo 2006).
In summary, most studies on the development of historic villages have examined development factors in the context of individual villages and have discussed the roles of cultural tourism, administrative policies, and public participation in promoting village development. However, evaluations of the development status of historic villages thus far have paid scant attention to the correlation between the different types of resource potentials and the direction of industrial development. This study first establishes a resource potential evaluation system and associated evaluation criteria and applies them to 14 villages with different development levels in the Guangzhou and Foshan (Guangfo) area of Guangdong province, China. Thereafter, the resource advantages and drawbacks of each village are analyzed, and the various types of historic villages and their resource potentials are summarized. On the basis of these analyses, development guidelines for the industries are presented. These guidelines, a major contribution of this paper to the literature, can be used to identify a suitable development direction for historic villages through the quantitative evaluation of resource potentials, according to which industrial planning can be undertaken.

Establishing evaluation factors through the big data mining of relevant papers
A system for evaluating the resource potential of historic villages was developed using the big data analysis method described in (Huang, Li, and Xiao 2021). The software independently developed by the research group has been used to collect and clean the network knowledge big data, by which the approximate full sample can be obtained in a very short time. Then the data has been analyzed by Chinese segmentation and intelligent semantic analysis to realize automatic data collection, cleaning and denoising, and professional words valuable for the evaluation of factors has been selected. This is a big data analysis method based on the views of the experts group, which can improve the reliability and validity of the evaluation factor studies.
For the present analysis, two keywords, namely "traditional village development" and "historical and cultural village and town development" were queried on 3 March 2020 via the Tansi Thinktank website (http://tstktk.arch.scut.edu.cn/). The resulting search of the full text of the literature published in all academic fields yielded 14,388 related papers. Word segmentation of the titles of these papers, extracted by the software, yielded 5,594 words. After excluding words occurring less than 50 times and those with low relevance, 136 words remained. Further, 76 common words, such as "construction," "city," "planning," "reform," "design," "innovation," "development," and "change," were excluded. The final 60 words were classified based on a theoretical analysis and the evaluators' subjective experience; for example, "ecology," "environment," "nature," "disaster," "geography," "transportation," "space," "land use," "style," and "landscape" were placed in the "environment" category. This approach resulted in 4 first-level, 8 second-level and 26 third-level evaluation factors.

Prioritising the evaluation factors
The first-, second-and third-level factors are denoted by k, i and p, respectively, and the sequence, word frequency and priority of the etymology are denoted by j, N and T, respectively. That is, Nj represents the word frequency of j in the total number of documents. The frequency of a second-level evaluation factor is calculated as the sum of the frequencies of all related words (Formula 1). The priority of an evaluation factor is determined as the ratio of the frequency of a secondlevel factor to the sum total frequency of all factors at that level (Formula 2). The priority of third-level factors is calculated similarly (Formula 3). Accordingly, the priority of a first-level factor is obtained as the sum total of the priorities of the encompassed second-level factors (Formula 4). Table 1 presents the resulting evaluation system.

Cases
The data of 35 state-level historic villages in the Guangfo area, Guangdong Province has been analyzed. Combined with the preliminary evaluation after field investigation, the development degree of historic villages has been divided into three levels, such as rapid, balanced and backward. Fourteen representative historic villages covering the three levels were selected for evaluation in this study: Gualing, Gangtou, Daling, Langtou and Shawanbei Village in Guangzhou, Songtang, Chaji, Huangxi, Yanqiao, Libian, Bijiang, Shajiao, Fengjian and Madong Village in Foshan. All of these villages are Guangfu cultural villages, which had been strongly invested by the governments in recent years. The basic data on the 14 historic villages were collated through field investigations, sourcing historic village archives and searching government reports and relevant literature. Table 2 presents a part of this data.

Results
Quantitative indicators were obtained first-hand by collecting information about the villages from planning and government documents, interviews with village committees and villagers and field surveys. Qualitative indicators were obtained from the literature. Figure 1 presents the resource potential of the 14 villages as evaluated by the proposed approach. The resource potential scores of the 14 historic villages vary from 3.7 to 6.9. The scores are used to classify the villages into one of five categories: 3 villages are classified as excellent (6.5+), 3 as good (6.5-6.0), 3 as average (6.0-5.0), 2 as below average (5.0-4.5), and 3 as poor (4.5 and lower) (Figure 2). Note: "Others" refers to immovable cultural relics newly discovered in the third national cultural relics census. The radar chart indicates that the scores of society, culture and environment factors are relatively similar and slightly higher than the total score; in contrast, economic factors are lower than the total score, indicating that the historic villages in the Guangfo area are lagging behind in economic development.

Environment
Regarding the environment factors, Daling, Langtou and Fengjian had the highest score, while Chaj and Shajiao had the lowest (Figure 3).

Natural environment
The natural environments of Fengjian and Yanqiao (Figures 4 and 5) are famous, as these two villages are typical net-like water villages in the Pearl River Delta water network. The villages are situated on flat plains, surrounded by farmlands and ponds, and are relatively distant from the town center. The ecological environment is well preserved, the greening rate is high, and natural disasters are relatively rare.

Built environment
In terms of the built environment, Langtou and Daling have the highest scores, and the overall built environment is good. Daling (Figure 6), nested beside mountains and rivers, is built in a half-moon shape; this village is well preserved and has high historical and cultural value. Langtou (Figure 7), known as the hometown of the imperial examination, is surrounded by ancient trees and ponds and has a strong cultural atmosphere. It has a Lingnan comb layout typical in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Most villages have low scores for built style, as the new dwellings have low-quality decorations that are inconsistent with the aesthetics of the older buildings. In Songtang, the hillside terrain of the ancient village was originally used to discharge rainwater; currently, a sewage pipe network is buried in the ancient infrastructure to divert rain and sewage, thereby ensuring minimal damage to the ancient stone-paved alleys (Figure 8).

Culture
The scores for cultural potential vary widely among the villages, with Qantou and Fengjian showing the highest and Huangxi and Libian the lowest (Figure 9).

Tangible heritage
Shawanbei, Bijiang, and Fengjian have the highest scores for material heritage. Fengjian has 2, 3, and 4 provincial-level, municipal-level, and county-level cultural protection units, respectively (Figure 10). The Chen Ancestral Hall in Shajiao (Figure 11) is one of the two largest ancestral halls in Guangdong. It houses numerous works showcasing excellent skills, such as murals, stone sculptures, pottery sculptures, and gray sculptures, and won the National Excellent Cultural Relics Maintenance Project Award. Shawanbei has a large number of historical buildings from the Ming and Qing eras, such as Liugeng Hall, Zhiguang Hall, and Yanqing Hall. Liugeng Hall (Figure 12). Wood carving is an art form that integrates multiple art styles to     create a variety of wooden crafts. An exquisite example of such art is the golden wood carving (Figure 13) in Bijiang Golden House, which is covered by gold foil stickers.

Intangible continuity
Langtou has the highest score for intangible cultural heritage. Langtou is home to two national intangible cultural heritages, namely couplet culture and Guangzhou gray plastic (Figure 14), earning the village the title of "Famous Chinese Couplet Culture Village." Provincial intangible cultural heritages in Langtou include lanterns, the southern lion, the farming and reading culture, and other cultural customs, all of which the villagers participate in to a relatively high degree. Shawanbei village, home to folk art and famous and diverse cultural activities such as a fish lantern culture festival, sacrificial festival, and activities associated with wedding customs, has the second highest score. Shawanbei also hosts the Shawan Floating Color Festival (Figure 15) on the third month of the lunar calendar, a festival popular both in and outside China. This village has earned the titles of "Hometown of Chinese Folk Art," "Hometown of Guangdong Music," and "Hometown of the Dragon and Lion in China."

Economy
Economic potential varied somewhat, with Bijiang and Shawanbei scoring the highest and Gangtou and Huangxi the lowest (Figure 16).

Income
In terms of economic income, the villages differ drastically in their overall scores, with Shawanbei and Bijiang having the highest. Shawanbei has been identified as a 4A-level tourist scenic spot, making it superior to other villages in terms of history, culture, traditional architecture and traditional landscape. Income in the village is mainly through the economic benefits of cultural resource tourism. The village adopts the community governance mode of "community," "social organization," "social work," "community enterprise," and "community fund."

Industrial development
In terms of industrial development, Yanqiao has the highest score due to its high agricultural industrialization level. Yanqiao has a total area of 800,000 square meters, with river and bamboo forests accounting for approximately 58,000 square meters. Fish ponds and farmlands account for approximately 650,000 square meters, which is 81.3% of the total area. The main cultivated crops are rice and corn, walnut (~247,000 square meters), and other economic forest fruits. This village has a large planting area, high modernization level, and efficient production capabilities. Regarding   animal husbandry, the main activities are large-scale breeding of pond fish and the rearing of pigs; the use of modern technology is relatively high, and the primary and secondary industries are well-developed.

Society
Social potential varied little, with Songtang scoring the highest and Qantou and Huangxi the lowest (Figure 17).

Rural governance
Songtang and Fengjian are prominent in terms of rural governance. Songtang, the "Hanlin Village," has a long history of respecting Confucianism and emphasizing literature and education. The villagers have fine folk customs. The rules and regulations of the village have always been recognized and supported by all villagers. From the construction of the village, many rich gentry independently protected the rural and ancestral temples. In 2009, Songtang formulated a plan to strengthen the protection and management of its history and culture. Subsequently, a series of protection planning documents has been continually formulated, such as the "Hanlin Cultural Village Tourism Development Plan in Songtang," "Rules and Regulations of Historical and Cultural Protection in Songtang," and "Beautiful Village Planning of Songtang."

Population
The villages differ widely in their population aggregation scores, with Songtang and Chaji having the highest. Songtang has only one surname; 28 generations  after its founding, its permanent population is less than 2000, and the village area is 0.11 square kilometers. The population outflow is relatively small, and the population density is high. The villagers of Chaji are harmonious and the village atmosphere is stable; the village is small (only 0.1 square kilometers), with a registered population of 1,124 and a high population density.

Discussion
The evaluation of the resource potential of historic villages reflects the current level of various factors ( Figure 18). Figure 19 presents the sub-item scores of the first-level factors of the resource potential for the 14 historic villages, and Figure 20 presents the classification of the industrial development type of these villages.
After the in-depth interviews with 5 managers of government departments, 4 managers of tourism companies, 13 managers of village committees, 16 villagers and merchants (Figure 21), combining their experience, opinions and suggestions, the historic village development guidelines with their own potential types were obtained as following: (1) Guiding environmentally prominent villages into ecological resorts We recommend planning a series of rural agricultural projects with natural ecological environment characteristics, such as pastoral complexes, rural health resorts, organic farms, ecological and agricultural park projects, ecological and circular agricultural projects, and ecological and agricultural tourism. New media avenues, such as live streaming, can be used to promote, from multiple perspectives, a number of fine leisure tourism routes with regional characteristics. For example, centers such as ecological recuperation bases, ecological amusement centers, rural photography expo parks, and folk ecological experience parks, can conduct and promote activities with seasonal themes such as "spring flowers," "cool summer," "autumn picking," and "winter agriculture." (2) Guiding culturally prominent villages into cultural experience centers The suggested planning projects include home stay experience parks, folk culture festivals, traditional culture museums, characteristic culture and education bases, Zen meditation halls, and leisure farms. Entertainment and accommodation facilities can be improved to build cultural and rural tourist attractions, thereby driving rural tourism. Industrial projects can be used to develop facilities such as traditional handicraft studios, handicraft inns, handicraft fairs, and commercial cultural experience streets. Examples of spiritual and cultural projects include those centered on calligraphy, sculpturing, and musical instrument casting.  Productive and life experience projects include making agricultural appliances, weaving textiles, and making spice jewelry.
(3) Guiding economically prominent villages into characteristic industries We suggest building a leading industrial economic center with core market competitiveness, strengthen and improve the overall quality of the village infrastructure, implement the development strategy of integrating digital rural areas and traditional characteristic industries, and promote the construction and exploration of big data from the whole industrial chain. We further suggest promoting "Internet + characteristic industries," the demonstration and application of agricultural Internet of Things in the creation of characteristic industries, and the construction of regional modern industrial markets. We also suggest the creation of a diversified industrial market that supports online and mobile phone transactions, such as WeChat Pay.
(4) Guiding socially prominent villages into logistic services Considering the surrounding core scenic spots for supporting health recuperation, art parks, rural education and training centers, catering facilities, rural home stays, and other such high-quality service-based facilities could be constructed, making full use of the local atmosphere. Moreover, family handcraft production workshops, rural expanded expo parks, and rural workshops could be built to encourage rural natives and outsiders to open environmentally friendly and socialdriven enterprises in rural areas. More jobs can be created by retaining traditional agricultural practices, which could prompt a return of the rural population.
(5) Guiding comprehensively prominent villages toward comprehensive development Idle agricultural houses could be repaired to create high-end vacation brands and experiences, such as boutique vacation experiences, entertainment departments, agricultural activity experiences and demonstration areas, planting and processing of fine agricultural products, and characteristic traditional culture experience places. By following the principle of "focusing on the farmers and ensuring their prosperity," the comprehensive development mode of "company + project + villagers to invest" will be explored. Every villager will be a shareholder, and the leisure agriculture and rural tourism will be integrated developed.
(6) Guiding villages with lagging development into agricultural expansion According to the local situation, economic functional areas can be built, such as efficient agricultural orchards, intelligent integrated ornamental farmland areas, and a new digital agriculture platform. Along with traditional industrial methods, it is suggested to vigorously develop intelligent and modern agriculture, inherit agricultural characteristics, pursue reasonable and creative transformation with various kinds of agricultural objects, and expand the infrastructure surrounding agricultural products, such as drying and storage, cold chain logistics, and comprehensive utilization of byproducts. Garden planting can be used to create a sea of flowers, forming a romantic and colorful landscape that offers numerous leisure spots. Agricultural economic projects with local characteristics can be formed by showing agriculture-related photos and paintings.

Conclusions
This paper adopts the quantitative evaluation method to evaluate the resource potential of 14 historic villages in China; the method includes 4 secondary evaluation factors, environmental, cultural, economic, and social, and 26 tertiary evaluation factors (Huang, Li, and Xiao 2021). By collecting application data, relevant planning, government work reports, and other data, as well as in-depth interviews with village cadres and villagers, the data of various factors are obtained and scored according to the evaluation criteria. The overall evaluation results show that Fengyuan, Shawanbei, and Bijiang have excellent resource potential and that Songtang, Langtou and Daling have good resource potential. In terms of the environment, Daling, Langtou, and Fengjian have the highest comprehensive potential scores; Fengjian has the highest score for natural environment, and Langtou and Daling villages score the highest for the built environment. The villages differ widely in their cultural potential, with Langtou and Fengjian having the highest scores. The villages differ to a moderate extent in terms of their economic resource potential, with Bijiang and Shawanbei having the highest scores. The gap in the social potential scores is moderate, with Songtang having the highest scores.
On the basis of the comprehensive score and scores for the primary, secondary, and tertiary factors of each examined village, the 14 historic villages can be divided into 5 categories in terms of their comprehensive resource potential: excellent, good, general, weak, and poor. According to the resource advantages associated with secondary and tertiary factors, the villages can be divided into six types: ecological resorts, cultural experience centers, characteristic industries, logistic services, comprehensive development, and agricultural expansion. Ecological resorts are positioned as the "back garden" of the town; that is, ecological resortstyle historic villages can be developed by integrating sightseeing, vacation, and recuperation activities. Cultural experience centers should be built around folk custom participation, cultural relic viewing, and guest house experience, which can improve support service industries. Villages with a characteristic industry can be developed through the economic development of the industry itself. Villages of the logistics service type are suitable to become transit nodes, serving as tourism transfer stations. Villages of the comprehensive development type can realize the organic and coordinated development of various elements and resources, with a focus on the development of advantageous projects. Finally, villages of the agricultural expansion type should develop modern agricultural industries, ecological, and green industries; improve the level of modern agriculture; and accelerate the promotion of smart agriculture.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).