More than 100 traditional Chinese villages will be featured in a new virtual museum, authorities said.
The museum, launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, will use pictures, videos, narration, three-dimensional images and other multi-media to show the villages' geography, traditional buildings, non-tangible cultural heritage, lifestyles and stories.
Villages with distinctive regional or ethnic features will be presented. Visitors can access the museum online via smart phones and other devices.
The platform will show the distinct values of Chinese traditional villages and will be a window through which the world can learn about Chinese agricultural civilization, said an official with the ministry.
China's traditional villages are disappearing as hundreds of millions of people move to the cities. The number of villages plummeted from 3.63 million to 2.71 million from 2000 to 2010.
A nationwide program to protect traditional villages began in 2012. In late 2015, each of the 2,555 villages on a national list of the most important traditional villages received three million yuan (US$454,100) in subsidies from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.