The study of clan paintings reveals a shift in perspective from art aesthetics to cultural connotations to cultural identity, yet literature seldom discusses the relationship between art and kinship culture. Taking the murals of ancestral hall architecture in Guangzhou as an example, this paper utilizes text mining to identify factors influencing its decorative art. It reveals the traditional rites' artistic expression through dimensions of characters' demeanor and the transmission of content values, offering a fresh perspective for heritage value research. Findings: (1) themes and implications are mostly oriented towards positive value transmission, transitioning from idealistic layman life to the realism of lower-class existence, emphasizing humanization; (2) the extroverted portrayal of characters contrasts with the dignified, restrained etiquette of traditional rites, with some characters' portrayal and facial expressions exuding approachability; (3) murals conveying positive emotions are mostly related to longevity, auspiciousness, fortune, and heroic deeds, while those conveying negative emotions mainly involve elderly male figures, reflecting a content bias related to characters; (4) historical allusion murals with complex content reduce the emotional resonance and arousal efficiency of the viewer; (5) incomplete mural content increases negative emotions in perceivers, highlighting the impact of mural preservation on emotional resonance. To delve into the formation of clan painting art, it is essential not only to interpret the diversity of its patterns but also to demonstrate the representation of its social attributes in decorative art. The formation of clan painting decorative art exhibits kinship cultural attributes, epitomizing the essence of traditional ceremonial thought.

The tomb ritual system serves as a vital mechanism for sustaining clan ethics within China’s patriarchal society and constitutes an institutional foundation for ancestral worship culture. As a paradigmatic ritual system, it reinforces familial identity, intergenerational continuity, and spatial order through periodic ancestral ceremonies. Its architectural expressions reflect a triadic function encompassing ritual regulation, symbolic schema, and spiritual representation. While existing scholarship has examined the influence of ancestral culture on the formation of educational architectural traditions, limited attention has been paid to the mural arts of Chinese traditional educational buildings. Drawing on relational hermeneutic theory, this study first employs event coding to construct models of the development trajectory and influencing layers of academy culture. It then adopts an iconographic method to comparatively analyze 22 architectural wall paintings from Guangdong and 12 from Shaanxi, exploring the kinship between architecture and ritual art along two dimensions: pro-educational nature and pro-spirituality.

With the accelerating global aging trend, ensuring age-friendly public transportation has become a pressing challenge in urban planning. While existing frameworks, such as the World Health Organization’s Age-Friendly Cities Initiative, provide general guidelines, they lack a systematic and quantitative approach to assessing the age-friendliness of rapid transit spaces. This study bridges this gap by developing an Age-Friendly Performance Index (AFPI) tailored to rapid transit environments. A mixed-method approach was employed, integrating both qualitative and quantitative research. The construction of AFPI incorporated mobile ethnography, case studies, and literature reviews, with findings systematically coded using proceduralized methods. The index was then validated through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and reliability testing, followed by the application of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Entropy Weight Method (EWM) for weighting. The study yielded two key findings: (1) A three-layered index structure was developed, comprising the goal level, criterion level, and indicator level. (2) AFPI demonstrated strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.929) and high structural validity, with EFA results supporting a four-factor model. AFPI provides a comprehensive and empirically validated framework for evaluating and enhancing the age-friendliness of rapid transit spaces. It serves as a critical tool for bridging the gap between policy guidelines and practical implementation, offering valuable insights for urban planners and policymakers to improve public transportation inclusivity for the elderly.

Anxiety among university students has become a critical global public health issue due to its high prevalence and impact. This study builds on prior work on virtual therapeutic landscape design and evaluation by operationalising therapeutic landscape principles in a virtual reality setting, aiming to develop and evaluate a multi-sensory immersive intervention for anxiety relief. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and the analytic hierarchy process, four core components – sensory, interactive, personalised and content experience – were identified, forming a systematic evaluation framework. A within-subject pre–post study involving 46 university students demonstrated that short-term virtual therapeutic landscape exposure significantly reduced state anxiety (p < 0.001, d = 0.916), negative affect (p < 0.001, d = 0.588) and enhanced subjective vitality (p < 0.001, d = 0.966). Physiological data showed decreased phasic skin conductance response and phase-related changes in tonic skin conductance level across baseline–intervention–recovery, both showing significant time effects. By contrast, virtual therapeutic landscape exposure produced comparatively smaller changes in trait anxiety (p < 0.001, d = 0.739) and positive affect (p = 0.005, d = 0.437). Taken together, virtual therapeutic landscape yielded convergent psychological and physiological benefits and provides an empirically grounded extension of therapeutic landscape theory into digital mental health interventions. Implications for practice or policy: Universities could use virtual therapeutic landscape as a low-burden adjunct to support short-term anxiety relief in students. Student support services can position virtual therapeutic landscape as a brief intervention for reducing state anxiety and negative affect rather than as a substitute for longer-term treatment. Designers of virtual reality mental health interventions should prioritise sensory immersion, user-friendliness and system stability to improve restorative outcomes.

Background: Exposure to therapeutic landscapes has been consistently associated with reduced stress, improved affect, and enhanced emotion regulation among young adults. However, access to such environments is often limited on urban campuses where anxiety is prevalent. In response, this study conceptualizes the virtual therapeutic landscape (VTL) and proposes a design and evaluation model that translates therapeutic landscape theory into immersive virtual reality (VR). Methods: A three-stage mixed-methods design was employed. Semi-structured interviews ( n = 18) were thematically analyzed to identify core experiential dimensions that informed VTL model development. Expert analytic hierarchy process (AHP) ratings ( n = 12) yielded weights for domains and sub-criteria with acceptable consistency. On this basis, a standardized VTL exposure was administered to university students ( n = 60), who completed psychometric questionnaires. Text-mined features from open-ended responses were integrated with these outcomes to refine the expert-weighted model. Results: The calibrated model produced a coherent weighting structure, with sensory experience receiving the highest weight among the experiential dimensions. Brief VTL exposure significantly reduced state anxiety ( p < 0.001, d = 1.040) and negative affect ( p < 0.001, d = 0.570) and increased subjective vitality ( p < 0.001, d = 0.794). Text mining supported an architecture in which sensory–narrative coupling and low-friction interaction experience act as primary levers, while personalization experience moderates these effects. Conclusions: This study develops a design and evaluation model for VTL targeting anxiety and emotion regulation in university students. Brief VTL exposure has shown measurable psychometric change; long-term effects and variation across VTL types remain priorities for future research.