A society’s cultural heritage is its inheritance of physical artifacts and intangible attributes, and their maintenance, protection, and continuation for future generations. The meaning of cultural heritage is, however, constantly changing in light of globalization and rapid urbanization. To better understand interactions between people and cultural heritage in daily life, and return cultural heritage to its sense of “place,” we present a visual methodology for heritage protection. Considering the Guangzhou overseas-Chinese community (OCC) as a case study, we apply pictorial assessment, eye-tracking, and interview methods to identify meanings of a returned overseas-Chinese inhabited area. Proposing a hybrid visual method, we aim to focus on the public’s interpretation of cultural heritage with regard to safeguarding it. Results indicate that the cultural heritage of the overseas-Chinese site has weakened over time due to its increasing importance as a metropolitan area. In accordance with our results, this paper offers insights for protection measures with a focus on architectural details, activities, and publicities. From the perspective of “neural turn,” we also propose a new method for cultural heritage protection that can effectively answer non-representational geographical questions and discuss cultural heritage protection in a fluid, embodied, and abstract context.

一个社会的文化遗产是其对自然人工制品和无形财产的继承，以及对子孙后代的维护，保护和延续。然而，鉴于全球化和快速城市化，文化遗产的含义正在不断变化。为了更好地理解人们与文化遗产在日常生活中的相互作用，并使文化遗产恢复其“地方”感，我们提出了一种视觉方法来保护遗产。以广州华侨社区（OCC）为例，我们采用图片评估，眼动追踪和访谈方法来确定返回的华侨华​​人居住区的含义。提出一种混合视觉方法，我们旨在关注公众在保护文化遗产方面的解释。结果表明，由于其作为都会区的重要性日益提高，华侨遗址的文化遗产随着时间的流逝而减弱。根据我们的结果，本文以建筑细节，活动和宣传为重点，提供了有关保护措施的见解。从“神经转向”的角度，我们还提出了一种文化遗产保护的新方法，该方法可以有效地回答非代表性的地理问题，并在流畅，具体和抽象的背景下讨论文化遗产保护。