“…As for the research on the villages and towns, domestic and foreign scholars have focused on their spatial distribution and influencing factors (Tchetchik et al, 2008; Chen et al, 2019; Yan et al, 2019), the development mode and path (Buark et al, 2004; Huang et al, 2019; Chen et al, 2022), the evolution process and mechanism (Liu and Wu, 2011; Greta et al, 2019; Li, 2019), rural development and protection (Yang, 2017; Brown, 2021; Yan, 2021), as well as rural transformation and revitalization (Chiodo, 2019; Wang and Li, 2022; Zhang and Zhang, 2022). In terms of the research object, the foreign academic focus has been on rural tourism (Maja et al, 2022), smart villages (Król and Hernik, 2022), digital villages (Gao et al, 2022), and related topics. However, China has a long history and a prosperous culture; so compared with foreign countries, the research object in China is wider and covers ethnic minority characteristic villages, traditional villages, ancient villages, ancient towns, historical and cultural towns, leisure villages and key rural tourism villages (Chen, 2019; Wang and Liu, 2020; Xu et al, 2020).…”