Zaiwan village, located in Qixian Town, Xiuwu County, Henan Province, is a typical plain village. The village was relocated in the 1960s. The spatial structure of the village is in the shape of a fish bone. There are no historical buildings, no landscape or industries. It is the representative of a large number of ordinary villages in China.

The division of historic periods of the existing houses in the village was clear and there were a lot of traces of spontaneous construction, which made the village look chaotic but real as a living specimen of the changes of folk residence in Northern Henan in recent 40 years. The theme of the design is “Living Museum of Folk Residence in Northern Henan in 40 Years of Reform and Opening-up”. By means of planning, landscape, architectural transformation design and artistic narration, the village style is sorted out and enlarged to make it clear and systematic.

first, the village texture and self-built traces are preserved to form the fundamental plane of the living museum. Then, the environmental health, village roads, spaces before and behind the houses, village lighting and so on are promoted as a whole, so as to provide better living conditions for the villagers. After that, a boutique tourist route and space nodes are created.

The boutique tourist route is a “time axis”, which connects the construction behaviors of Zaiwan Village in the past 40 years. The design carries on the artistic treatment to the pavement and the wall surface, adds street furniture and game devices and so on, and emphasizes the landscape design and the public art narrative. The space nodes include: Exhibition Hall of the Folk Residence in Northern Henan, village logo, elevation transformation of the village health center, art installation of Spring Blossoms, Square of Double Happiness and Pisces, etc., which are combined with the original style of the village, forming a special text to interpret the changes of ordinary villages and contemporary folk residence in Northern Henan.