Ancient Chinese residential buildings carry profound historical and cultural connotations, and their architectural forms, structural features and decorative elements contain rich cultural symbolism. In this study, through literature analysis and spatial analysis methods, using Tableau data interaction tool and ArcGIS geographic information system, we conduct a systematic research on ancient residential buildings before the Yuan Dynasty in the state-protected units to explore their functional characteristics and cultural symbolism. The research methodology includes spatial analysis of 760 state-protected units, in-depth excavation of the cultural connotations of ancient residential buildings through the interactive analysis of variables such as building types, eras, materials, etc., combined with the theory of creating and translating architectural and cultural terms in literary works. The results show that the proportion of religious buildings among the 1456 monolithic buildings reaches 78.1%, the proportion of bridge and water conservancy buildings is 11.61%, and the proportion of ritual buildings is 7.35%. The building structure is dominated by three forms: raised beam, pierced bucket and dense beam flat roof, in which the number of arch-out jumping layers has a significant impact on the seismic performance of the building. It is found that ancient residential buildings not only have practical functions, but also carry profound cultural symbolism, reflecting the philosophical idea of harmony and unity between human and nature in traditional Chinese culture, which provides important reference for contemporary architectural design and cultural inheritance.