The revitalization of traditional villages is of great significance to promoting the high-quality development of urban and rural areas and building a cultural power. Taking Chaohua village, Xinmi city, Henan province as an example, this paper uses the theoretical core of cultural ecology for reference, highlights the core role of actors, constructs the evaluation index system of living development level from the three elements of "material, culture and core", and uses AHP and weighted summation method for quantitative evaluation. The research shows that: (1) The score of Chaohua village's living development level is 63.7709, which belongs to the general type of "inactivation", with the highest score of core elements, followed by material elements, and the lowest score of cultural elements. (2) Facing the realistic dilemma of mutual correlation and negative circulation, such as the double contradiction of material elements, the double restriction of cultural elements, and the double imbalance of core elements. (3) The influencing factors are as follows: the contradiction between the advantages and disadvantages of the basic support of material elements, the restriction of the lack of carrier and activation of the intermediary transmission of cultural elements, the imbalance between high recognition and low governance driven by core elements, and the superposition of weak positive linkage and strong negative circulation of the interaction and coordination of elements. (4) The activation path adheres to the activation principle of preserving the originality of local characteristics, restoring the integrity of traditional features, and promoting the vitality of sustainable development, and proposes the activation path of ecological industry, digital inheritance, and governance and operation based on the synergy of "material, culture and core" elements.

Heritage vitality is a critical indicator of the effectiveness of traditional village conservation. Faced with multidimensional processes of devitalization, conservation practice requires a rigorous vitality assessment that can identify typological differentiation and illuminate the mechanisms linking conservation with adaptive use, thereby enabling more targeted and context-sensitive protection. Building on living heritage approaches and China's conservation experience, this study develops an evaluation framework structured around two core dimensions: community agency and heritage continuity. Community agency reflects the combined influence of residents, markets, and government actors, while heritage continuity captures the persistence of village functions together with the intergenerational transmission of heritage elements. Applying this framework to 26 nationally designated traditional villages in Beijing, we classify villages into vitality types, diagnose their type-specific patterns of devitalization, and analyze the mechanisms by which diverse actors engage in conservation and use. Between October 2020 and May 2024, multiple rounds of in-situ fieldwork were conducted, each lasting four to seven days, combining spatial analysis, questionnaire surveys, and semi-structured interviews to generate systematically comparable data across cases. The findings are threefold. (1) Villages sort into four vitality types at the intersection of agency and continuity: high community agency - high heritage continuity (HH), high community agency-low heritage continuity (HL), low community agency - high heritage continuity (LH), low community agency - low heritage continuity (LL). (2) Each type exhibits distinctive pressures of devitalization: HH villages are most affected by market commodification that displaces everyday functions; HL villages are constrained by ruptures in functional continuity despite strong mobilization; LH villages are jointly shaped by resident action and market dynamics, resulting in uneven revitalization; and LL villages are most impacted by the erosion of intergenerational transmission of heritage elements. (3) Conservation-use mechanisms likewise vary: HH villages benefit from the alignment of political and economic objectives across governance levels, enabling networked, multi-village revitalization supported by government regulatory tools for equitable benefit-sharing. HL villages rely on consensus built around endogenous strengths, where village committees seek government support for cluster-oriented revitalization and establish equity-based revenue-sharing schemes. LH villages originate in the dual demands of livelihood improvement and enterprise profit, where firms and residents jointly pursue village-wide adaptive reuse under reciprocal benefit arrangements. LL villages, in contrast, depend primarily on directive, single-site safeguarding under government-led policies, which to date have produced limited value-added outcomes. Conceptually, the study advances the understanding of heritage vitality as an interplay between agency and continuity. Methodologically, it operationalizes vitality through transparent indicators that support typological comparison and policy monitoring. Practically, it establishes a diagnostics-to-mechanisms pathway for precision protection: diagnose the vitality type, identify the dominant pressures, and match them with feasible governance arrangements and conservation-compatible use models.

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.