Why do rural houses in China, despite spending a lot of money, still look not very good?

You will find that many rural houses in China are actually not cheap.
Three or four stories, several hundred square meters, brick exterior walls, marble doorways, Roman columns, wrought iron railings, almost everything one would expect.
But from a distance, it always feels like something is off.
Conversely, looking at some ordinary homes in American, Japanese, or Nordic villages, their size may not be bigger, their materials may not be more expensive, and many houses are so simple that they only have two or three colors, yet they look much more comfortable overall.
Many people think this is a matter of aesthetic difference.
But aesthetics are often just the result; the real reason lies in the social structure behind the houses.
Under China's institutional culture, for thousands of years, we have emphasized clans, kinship, and clustering.
People from the same village live together, people from the same family live together.
The relationship between houses is often more important than the relationship between the house and nature.
Architecture faces not the wilderness, but neighbors.
So people naturally develop another kind of demand:
Want to live comfortably, but also want others to see;
Want practicality, but also want dignity;
Want to meet family living needs, but also to carry family status.
Thus, houses gradually become a form of display, and gradually shift from being a living tool to a symbol of identity.
Therefore, the core relationship of American rural homes is between people and land.
When buildings mainly serve people and land, aesthetic appeal often comes from unity and whitespace, emphasizing harmony.
In contrast, the core relationship of Chinese rural homes is between people.
When buildings mainly serve people and others, aesthetics often give way to identity, comparison, and expression, emphasizing presence.
So the differences we see are not just architectural differences, but a projection of two social organizational models in architecture.
American rural houses are rooted in the land; Chinese rural houses are rooted in the community.
The final form of a house often depends on whom it primarily responds to.