Hence the dilemma: Without well-developed transportation, few people would know about these areas. But with convenient transportation, many villagers may leave to pursue a better life in big cities.
"The best way to protect these ancient towns is to allow residents to stay there," Wan said.
Liang Hongsheng, history professor at Jiangxi Normal University, said this pressure makes it difficult to maintain the environment of old villages.
"Since villagers gained access to modern city life, they enjoy using electrical equipment and modern furniture to decorate their houses, knocking down walls [to accommodate changes]. Then everything changed," Liang said.
Protection plans
"My new home is in a central area, neighboring other people's houses. It looks exactly like my old home," said Ouyang Linxiang, a resident of Ji'an.
In order to maintain Ji'an's original look, the local government launched a project to allow villagers to build new houses in a designated region outside the old towns.
"We provided a small district for them to construct new buildings so they do not do anything to the old ones. Any damages or changes to the old houses must be reported," said Zhu Lisheng, vice director of publicity department of Ji'an City Committee of the CPPCC.
There are still a few ancient villages in Ji'an, like Shukou and Futian, that are not covered by the protection project.
"The economic condition of every village differs. There are geographical as well as financial factors. The cost for one village project costs approximately 80,000 yuan ($12,632) to 100,000 yuan," Zhu said.
Since people who have new homes do not want to allocate further money on repairing their old houses, the costs fall on local authorities.
"It is more difficult than protecting the Imperial Palace," said Lou Qingxi, professor of architecture at Tsinghua University.
The maintenance of ancient villages relies on both the local government and residents. But few have a basic knowledge of the situation. Outside a recently repaired temple, originally built in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), simplified Chinese characters are scrawled as graffiti.
"This is a result of repairing without experts," said Zou Nonggeng, the vice-chairman of a folk literature and art society in Jiangxi. "I also found that people were using real antiques at a local folk show performance. These valuable antiques [should have] been in museums long ago," he added.
Archiving and collecting
"The protection of ancient villages requires knowledge of traditional Chinese culture, architecture, history and aesthetics. Cooperating with universities will be very helpful," said Professor Qi Jiahua from Xi'an Architecture University. He suggests collecting and organizing relevant literatures and videos at hand.
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