Five Action Programs of Stories of Thousand Villages is a significant project of Zhejiang province on rural culture construction with retrievable exploration，collation，recording and inheritance of intangible cultural heritages，based on the protection and utilization of the tangible cultural heritages of ancient cultural villages.The project mainly targets at 1237 villages in The List of Zhejiangs Ancient Cultural Villages （“the Listed Villages” for short），with a series of tasks carried out，including “digging into the lore and legends and compiling a series of books to trace historical development—working out a collection of fruits and achievements to capture the charms of the countryside—making a disk of images to take a trip on the memory lane to relive the nostalgia—bringing out a pavilion for display to build spiritual home—developing a bunch of bases.”

The project of Stories of Thousand Villages takes the figures，the articles，and the anecdotes of “the Listed Villages of Ancient Cultural Villages” as its objects of study.Basically，for each village，only one story is compiled in about 2000 words.Each volume includes about 90 stories.The title of the story adopts the form of “the village name and the county name（city name is added before the district name）+the story theme”.As to the stories centered on personae，we follow the basic principles of “no biography for those still alive，adapting to the times and showing ‘positive power’”.If the same person is involved in several villages，the stories are integrated into one while keeping the marks of the persons activities in these villages.The stories are compiled with the principle integrating three aspects：the first is that historicity is concerned when exploring，sorting out and compiling the stories，that is，what we select are those widely spread stories which really happened in the ancient cultural villages；the second is that the stories we compile are informative，that is，the stories are worth reading，collecting and spreading；the third is that the stories are instructive，that is，the stories are valuable for spreading and carrying forward the fine traditional cultures of the villages.

Selected Stories of Thousand Villages compiles 260 stories selected from the eight volumes of “Stories of Thousand Villages” in accordance with the requirements that the stories represent the regional distribution of the ancient cultural villages in Zhejiang，reflect great cultural traditions in different aspects，and meet the principle of historicity，informativity and instructivity.Selected Stories of Thousand Villages is consisted of 3 books，among which the first book focuses on the layout，residence environment，traditional etiquette and morality，and farming-reading culture of the ancient cultural villages，collecting 90 stories from Ecological Residence （edited by Wang Xin），Etiquette and Morality （edited by Hong Qianli） and Encouraging Learning and Farming （edited by Gao Jun，Jing Jing）；the second book praises the incorrupt officials，righteous and virtuous scholars，and other celebrities of public prestige，collecting 85 stories from Honesty and Righteousness （edited by Yan Xiaohong），Celebrities of Public Prestige （edited by Wang Changjin and Peng Tingsong）；the third book introduces the folk customs，traditional craftsmanship and local products of ancient cultural villages in Zhejiang，collecting 85 stories from Folk Tradition and Customs（edited by Zhou Xinhua and Zhu Yongxiang），Craftsmanship （edited by Ren Zhong and Tang Zishun） and Local Specialties（edited by Che Yubin）

Because of the limited the space and the constraints of the collecting principles of Selected Stories of Thousand Villages，the selected stories cannot perfectly reflect the regional distribution of Zhejiangs ancient cultural villages and the achievements in the construction of major villages.In addition，limited by the time，we may also have defects in the expression of some stories.So any suggestions and criticisms will be highly appreciated.

The studio of “Stories of Thousand Villages”

March，2016