Coming Home after Enjoying the Scenery Along the Road: Interpretation of Resource Characteristics of Overseas Chinese Cultural Routes in Jiangmen

The cultural routes theory of multi-dimensional development is of great significance to integrate regional cultural heritage and provide a comprehensive approach to the protection and utilization. Different from traditional cultural heritage types, the Cultural Routes concept extends the “point” in the spatial sense of space of cultural heritage resources to the level of "line" through a holistic perspective, and supports the relevance of heritage sites across regions in a larger scale. It recognizes and enhances these scattered heritage sites on a macroscopic and holistic linear spatial scale for overall protection. Taking Jiangmen as an example, based on the study of Cultural Routes in definitions, concepts, composition conditions and feature interpretation, this paper analyzes and interprets the cultural heritages of Jiangmen from four characteristics, which are the time and space variability, historical function, cultural communication and pluralistic integrity. It finds the historical and cultural context of Jiangmen cultural heritage and the current status of its spatial distribution. Therefore, it provides a basis for establishing and demonstrating the Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Culture Routes featuring “micro-scale heritage tandem and macro-scale cultural identity”.