Traditional villages serve as crucial places for the living transmission and conservation of Chinese cultural heritage. Yet many existing conservation practices, by emphasizing the technical repair of heritage elements rather than their symbiotic and systemic vitality, have failed to sustain those villages' cultural presence and reproduction. This imbalance has produced the dilemma often described as "cultural presence without effective articulation", triggering debates over both "de-activated protection", and "destructive preservation". Grounded in the theory of living heritage, this study adopts the biological metaphor of a "phenotypic expression system" to conceptualize the chain of cultural expression. It advances the "Relationship-Object-Practice" (ROP) framework, which integrates three interdependent dimensions: explicit heritage elements (object dimension), implicit heritage elements (relationship dimension), and cultural practices (practice dimension). Based on an empirical case study of Lijiatuan village in Shandong province, the investigation reveals that although the village retains a relatively complete set of heritage resources, the relationship dimension has not exerted sufficient efficacy in sustaining the living practice of heritage. Community networks have become weakened in their ability to regulate and activate collective participation, while the practice dimension has been narrowly conceived, diverting attention away from mechanisms that support cultural expression and reproduction. Consequently, the object dimension has suffered from inadequate reintegration of everyday functions, leaving the village exposed to the risk of cultural deactivation, in which heritage persists in appearance but loses its living significance. In response, this paper proposes a conservation turn oriented toward the living expression of heritage. From the relational dimension, it advocates collaborative governance that privileges community leadership while incorporating external assistance; from the object dimension, it permits the adaptive transformation of heritage elements to meet changing social needs; and from the practice dimension, it calls for systematic monitoring and carefully calibrated intervention to prevent cultural stagnation without suppressing organic evolution. Through this orientation, the paradigm of traditional village conservation can shift from "elemental maintenance" to "cultural sustainability", ensuring not only the preservation of heritage resources but also the regeneration of cultural vitality as a dynamic and evolving system of life.
Shi et al. (2026) studied this question.