So I lived in China for the last 5 years and always looking for new and interesting history. I know lots of history was destroyed in the Great Leap Forward and the cultural revolution. So my questions are as follows.
The Cultural Revolution didn't physically result in the damage of many villages. A lot of villages in China simply began to modernize along with the rest of China as the economy of the country grew, which is a pretty typical process. If there were any villages in China during the mid-late 20th century whose outward appearance remained largely the same from their Imperial era, then the Cultural revolution probably wouldn't have forced them to change.
Now culturally, the story is different. Following the Great Leap Forward, a lot of the villages in China began to suffer from systemic issues stemming largely from government mismanagement of resources. Corruption was rampant, extortion common and in the early 60s, the black markets which had sprung up to deal with food and other necessities were deemed to be 'free markets' and thus, counter-revolutionary. So in 1963, Mao implemented the 'Four Cleanups' movement which was aimed at curbing the ills of counter-revolutionary actions. This movement would basically directly lead up to the Cultural revolution in 1966. The Four Cleanups and the Cultural revolution was pretty disastrous for social life in China. Scholars note that factional in-fighting was common, even in small, traditional and rural villages. Richard Baum notes that rural party cadres who had largely gone under the radar of Big Brother back in Beijing now came under scrutiny and even vicious attack and later on, Johnathan Unger estimated that only about a third of villages would emerge from the Cultural Revolution largely untouched.
But villages still did survive unscathed through all of this. A quick google search pulled up a few villages like 爨底下村 which has a founding date in the early Ming dynasty. There are also a few in southern China which have also managed to preserve aspects of life during the Imperial era. Are they worth going to? I dunno, are you interested in that kind of thing? I once flagged down some sketchy tour guide outside of Dunhuang to go and touch the Han dynasty watchtowers on the western fringes of the Great Wall but if you aren't a fan of large, rammed-earth mounds, then you probably would have found it pretty boring.
sources:Jonathan Unger