**1. Introduction**

Shaxi Ancient Town is situated in the Dali area of China, where the Bai people live. Today, it is the only typically well-preserved settlement. It combines Confucianism, Buddhism, and the commercial horse band culture. The early Ming and Qing architectural culture also influences the old town. It reflects the multicultural makeup of traditional Bai architecture. The ancient town of Shaxi has been home to one of the world's endangered buildings since 2002. Due to its modest village design and historical and cultural importance, Shaxi has become a renowned tourist attraction and social centre. Moreover, it has attracted tourists and researchers from all over the world. The Shaxi revitalisation project [1] has preserved the historic town in various ways. However, tourism and urbanisation have brought foreign cultures into the town. Many researchers are trying to explore this issue from different perspectives, as it is vital to find a new way to protect and bring life back to the traditional villages, such as cultural heritage [2], cultural tourism [3,4], and national culture [5]. Luck expresses the people's view of a brighter future. Different lucky cultures may reflect various folklore and cultural backgrounds. Common lucky elements include objects, behaviours, language, words, and numbers. Traditional architecture's lucky elements refer to the decorative motif in each building component. They also represent a desire for a better life. This study analyses the blessed cultural characteristics of traditional Shaxi Bai architecture.

Today, traditional village studies focus on cultural perspectives [6]. Ao [7] talked about how influential culture is. Moreover, America [8] explained how culture and architecture are linked. Xia [9] also said that local culture should be a part of historic districts. In the past few years, regions with distinct ethnic traditions have been the focus of Chinese

**Citation:** Zhao, H.; Huang, Z.; Deng, C.; Ren, Y. The Decorative Auspicious Elements of Traditional Bai Architecture in Shaxi Ancient Town, China. *Sustainability* **2023**, *15*, 1918. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15031918

Academic Editor: Aliakbar Kamari

Received: 18 November 2022 Revised: 13 January 2023 Accepted: 14 January 2023 Published: 19 January 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

architecture research, such as the southern part of Fujian [10,11], the northern part of Shaanxi [12], and Jinzhong [13]. Only some studies about the Bai region in northwest Yunnan are helpful. Aside from that, many studies on lucky culture focus on traditional residential architecture. Furthermore, most researchers have examined what architectural decorations mean to different cultures. Similarly to Xuan Ran [14], he looked at the artistic and cultural values already there. Wang Yan [15] demonstrated the significance of decoration in contemporary architectural design. Du Y [16] emphasised how the method of lucky decorations could be applied in practice. It integrates traditional architectural components such as random decorations into modern building design. Furthermore, this helps the Chinese architectural market change and preserves fortunate culture. Hongyan Xiang [17] demonstrates lucky culture through traditional building decorations, which are auspicious. It examined how traditional architecture preserves and promotes good luck. In conclusion, most research describes random things qualitatively, focusing on identification and appraisal. Few quantitative research has examined lucky element diversity and cooccurrence network properties.

We need qualitative and quantitative methods to reveal traditional architecture's lucky cultural traits. This study focuses on Shaxi, an old town in the Bai region of Yunnan Province. The first step was to carry out field research to find lucky elements. Then, we figured out the diversity index of lucky elements by diversity analysis. Moreover, we worked out the co-occurrence network index by complex network analysis. The last step is to compare and examine the calculations. This will reveal the lucky cultural characteristics of the classic old-town architecture. Next, the multicultural-indigenous culture link in the ancient town is investigated. In the historic town, to exhibit the cultural perspective of the Bai people, Shaxi may be an example of conserving and developing other traditional villages.
