Cangdong living community museum : re-strategizing the cultural heritage interpretation for Cangdong Village, Kaiping, China

Abstract

Cangdong Village is in the Kaiping City, one of the three historic hometowns of Overseas Chinese in Guangdong Province and thereby a building center of Overseas Chinese hometown. It is also a country landscape features the blending of Western and Chinese. Facing the problem of the left of the younger generation and the upsurge of building village history museum, Cangdong Village hopes to build a Living Community Museum focusing on community building and cultural heritage conservation. Interpretation is particularly important both in the project and management of the historic village itself. This dissertation, therefore, set out to form the interpretation strategy for Cangdong Village. This dissertation focuses on the interpretation of the cultural significance of Cangdong Village. A review of the current interpretation of Cangdong Village is carried out to show the shortage of current interpretation and the reason behind it is the inward-looking interpretation strategy. Historical relationship and cultural connections of Cangdong Village and associated sites is presented as the basis of the proposed out-ward looking interpretation strategy. New technologies and approaches are suggested to be introduced into the interpretation of Cangdong Village. The re-strategizing of interpretation for Cangdong Village gives an example of how to interpret the cultural significance of a historical village to the emerging construction of village history museum.