Along the River During the Qingming Festival (detail of original).jpg
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''Along the River During the Qingming Festival'' (''Qingming Shanghe Tu'') is a handscroll
painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
by the
Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...
painter
Zhang Zeduan Zhang Zeduan (; 1085–1145), courtesy name Zhengdao (), was a Chinese painter of the Song dynasty. He lived during the transitional period from the Northern Song to the Southern Song, and was instrumental in the early history of the Chinese l ...
(1085–1145) and copied many times in the following centuries. It captures the daily life of people and the landscape of the capital, Bianjing (present-day
Kaifeng Kaifeng () is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, China. It is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China, having been the capital eight times in history, and is best known for having been the Chinese capital during the Nort ...
) during the Northern Song. The theme is often said to celebrate the festive spirit and worldly commotion at the
Qingming Festival The Qingming festival or Ching Ming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English (sometimes also called Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestors' Day), is a traditional Chinese festival observed by the Han Chinese of mainland China, Hong Ko ...
, rather than the holiday's ceremonial aspects, such as tomb sweeping and prayers. Read right to left, as a viewer unrolled it, successive scenes reveal the lifestyle of all levels of the society from rich to poor as well as economic activities in rural areas and the city, and offer glimpses of period clothing and architecture. The painting is considered to be the most renowned work among all
Chinese painting Chinese painting () is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as ''guó huà'' (), meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western style ...
s, and it has been called "China's ''
Mona Lisa The ''Mona Lisa'' ( ; it, Gioconda or ; french: Joconde ) is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known ...
''." As an artistic creation, the painting has been revered and artists of subsequent dynasties made hundreds of replicas, copies of copies, and even forgeries of well-regarded copies, each following the overall composition and the theme of the original but differing in detail and technique.Bruce Doar, "International Conference on Qingming Shanghe Tu and Song Dynasty Genre Paintings, Beijing, 10–12 October 2005.," ''China Heritage Newsletter, China Heritage Project ''4 (December 2005

/ref> Over the centuries, the Song original was kept by private collectors before it eventually returned to public ownership. The painting was a particular favorite of Puyi, China's Last Emperor, who took it with him when he was forced to leave the
Forbidden City The Forbidden City () is a Chinese palace, palace complex in Dongcheng District, Beijing, China, at the center of the Imperial City, Beijing, Imperial City of Beijing. It is surrounded by numerous opulent imperial gardens and temples includ ...
in 1924. It was recovered in 1945 and kept at the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City. The Song original and later versions are regarded as national treasures and are exhibited only for brief periods every few years.


The Song original

The original painting is celebrated as the most famed work of art from the Song dynasty. However, little was directly known about its painter, who is generally presumed to be Zhang Zeduan, since records were destroyed when the Jin dynasty overthrew the Northern Song dynasty. There is continued debate and research over its creator, the date and location of where it was painted, and the intended meaning of the work. The earliest attribution to Zhang Zeduan is an inscription dated 1186, which was added on the basis of an earlier catalog by the Jin imperial curator, Zhang Zhu (active late 12th century) to the original scroll: :: Hanlin cademicianZhang Zeduan, courtesy name Zhengdao, was a native of Dongwu. He went to the capital to study when he was young. Later he learned painting. He mastered jiehua and took particular pleasure in depicting boats, carts, markets, bridges, city walls, and streets. He even established his own style. According to Mr. Xiang's critiques on paintings,
he works He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
''Xihu zhengbiao tu'' (''Dragon Boat Regatta on the West Lake'') and ''Qingming shanghe tu'' belong to the divine class; collectors should treasure them. The scroll is in height and long. In its length there are 814 humans, 28 boats, 60 animals, 30 buildings, 20 vehicles, 8 sedan chairs, and 170 trees. Only about twenty women appear in the Song dynasty original, and only women of low social rank are visible out of doors unless accompanied by men. The countryside and the densely populated city are the two main sections in the picture, with the river meandering through the entire length. The right section is the rural area of the city. There are crop fields and unhurried rural folk—predominately farmers, goatherds, and pig herders—in bucolic scenery. A country path broadens into a road and joins with the city road. The left half is the urban area, which eventually leads into the city proper with the gates. Many economic activities, such as people loading cargoes onto the boat, shops, and even a tax office, can be seen in this area. People from all walks of life are depicted: peddlers, jugglers, actors, paupers begging, monks asking for alms, fortune tellers and seers, doctors, innkeepers, teachers, millers, metalworkers, carpenters, masons, and official scholars from all ranks. Outside the city proper (separated by the gate to the left), there are businesses of all kinds, selling wine, grain, secondhand goods, cookware, bows and arrows, lanterns, musical instruments, gold and silver, ornaments, dyed fabrics, paintings, medicine, needles, and artifacts, as well as many restaurants. The vendors (and in the Qing revision, the shops themselves) extend all along the great bridge, called the Rainbow Bridge (虹橋 ''Hong Qiao'') or, more rarely, the Shangdu Bridge (上土橋). Where the great bridge crosses the river is the center and main focus of the scroll. A great commotion animates the people on the bridge. A boat approaches at an awkward angle with its tow-mast not completely lowered, threatening to crash into the bridge. The crowds on the bridge and along the riverside are shouting and gesturing toward the boat. Someone near the apex of the bridge lowers a rope to the outstretched arms of the crew below. In addition to the shops and diners, there are inns, temples, private residences, and official buildings varying in grandeur and style, from huts to mansions with grand front- and backyards. People and commodities are transported by various modes: wheeled wagons, beasts of labor (in particular, a large number of donkeys and mules), sedan chairs, and chariots. The river is packed with fishing boats and passenger-carrying ferries, with men at the river bank, pulling the larger ships. Many of these details are roughly corroborated by Song dynasty writings, principally the '' Dongjing Meng Hua Lu'', which describes many of the same features of life in the capital.


Copies

The original painting was a pride of the imperial collections for centuries. It was frequently copied by later artists of successive periods and it became familiarized among the nobles, scholar officials, urban residents and merchants. Many scholars thought of the Song original as the "masterpiece", and gave little respect to later versions, which they called mere copies, forgeries, reproductions, reinterpretations or elaborations, more than a hundred of which are now in museums in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, North America, and France. The significance and value of these "copies," however, has recently been recognized. An early copy, generally considered to be faithful to the original, was made by
Zhao Mengfu Zhao Mengfu (; courtesy name Zi'ang (子昂); pseudonyms Songxue (松雪, "Pine Snow"), Oubo (鷗波, "Gull Waves"), and Shuijing-gong Dao-ren (水精宮道人, "Master of the Water Spirits Palace"); 1254–1322), was a Chinese calligrapher, pa ...
during the
Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth ...
. The
Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
(14th to 17th centuries) painter Qiu Ying is credited with several copies, which have considerable differences from the original. One version came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
in 1947. Another has a length of 6.7 meters, longer than the original. It also replaced the scenery from the Song dynasty to that of the Ming dynasty based on contemporary fashions and customs, updating the costumes worn by the characters and the styles of vehicles (boats and carts). The Song wooden bridge is replaced with a stone bridge in the Ming remake. The arc of the stone bridge is much taller than that of the wooden original, and where the original had a boat about to crash into the bridge, the reinterpretation has a boat being methodically guided under the bridge by ropes, pulled by men ashore, several other large boats dutifully waiting their turn, undisturbed. Another 12 meter long copy from the late Ming period is kept in the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna in Austria. In the late Ming and early
Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
dynasties, dozens of copies were made by little-known professional painters in Suzhou, usually carrying the (forged) signature of either Zhang Zeduan or Qiu Ying. The scholar Chang Su-chen argues that these paintings should not be dismissed as mere "copies." These painters, she says, created “distinctive paintings that visualized pre-modern viewers’ various conceptions of a “great age,” an ideal society from the traditional Chinese perspective.” Quite different was the painting, known as the "Qing Court Version," commissioned by the Yongzheng Emperor, which was completed only after his death by five court painters (Chen Mu, Sun Hu, Jin Kun, Dai Hong and Cheng Zhidao). These five artists worked from a draft scroll in ink, also shown below, by Shen Yuan, another court painter, who apparently worked under the emperor's personal supervision. It was presented to the
Qianlong Emperor The Qianlong Emperor (25 September 17117 February 1799), also known by his temple name Emperor Gaozong of Qing, born Hongli, was the fifth Emperor of the Qing dynasty and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1735 t ...
on January 15, 1737. This is distinguished by its innovative modern style, high degree of detail, and intact preservation. This version, shown below, was later moved, along with major portions of the imperial collection, to the
National Palace Museum The National Palace Museum (; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Kwet-li̍p kù-kiung pok-vu̍t-yèn), is a museum in Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan). It has a permanent collection of nearly 700,000 pieces of Chinese artifacts and artworks, many of which wer ...
in Taipei in 1949. There are many more people, over 4,000, in this remake, which also is much larger (at 11 metres by 35 cm, or 37 ft by 1 ft). The leftmost third of this version, which does not appear in the Song version, is within the palace, with buildings and people appearing refined and elegant. Most people within the castle are women, with some well-dressed officials.


Associated poem

In April 1742, the
Qianlong Emperor The Qianlong Emperor (25 September 17117 February 1799), also known by his temple name Emperor Gaozong of Qing, born Hongli, was the fifth Emperor of the Qing dynasty and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1735 t ...
composed a poem to be added to the right-most end of the 1737 scroll. The calligraphy is in the running script style, and is in the hand of Liang Shizheng (梁詩正), a prominent court official and companion of the emperor. The poem reads as follows:


Notable exhibitions

In a rare move, the Song original was exhibited in Hong Kong from June 29 to mid-August 2007 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's transfer to the People's Republic of China. It is estimated that the costs of shipping the painting ran into tens of millions of dollars in addition to an undisclosed cost of insuring this piece of priceless art. From January 2–24, 2012, the painting was exhibited in the Tokyo National Museum as the centerpiece of a special exhibition to mark the 40th anniversary of normalized diplomatic relations between China and Japan, with the Japanese museum officials providing the "highest security standards" for the work.


Digital version

For a three-month period in the
World Expo 2010 Expo 2010, officially the Expo 2010 Shanghai China, was held on both banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China, from 1 May to 31 October 2010. It was a major World Expo registered by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), in the ...
presented at the China Pavilion, the original painting was remade into a 3D animated, viewer-interactive digital version, titled ''River of Wisdom''; at 128 × 6.5 m, it is roughly 30 times the size of the original scroll. The computer-animated mural, with moving characters and objects and portraying the scene in 4-minute day and night cycles, was one of the primary exhibitions in the Chinese Pavilion, drawing queues up to two hours with a reservation. Elaborate computer animation gives life to the painting. After the Expo, the digital version was on display at the AsiaWorld–Expo in Hong Kong from November 9 to 29, 2010, where it was a major commercial success. It was then exhibited at the Macau Dome in Macau from March 25 to April 14, 2011. The digital painting also traveled to Taiwan and displayed at the Expo Dome in Taipei from July 1 to September 4, 2011. From December 7, 2011 to February 6, 2012, in an exhibition titled ''A Moving Masterpiece: The Song Dynasty As Living Art'', the digital reproduction was exhibited at the Singapore Expo. Today, it is on permanent exhibition at the China Art Museum, Shanghai.


Gallery


Analysis and questions

Scholars have studied the painting carefully in the second half of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century but do not agree on many basic points. Scholars question the accuracy of the translation of the painting's name; the word ''Qingming'' may refer to either "peace and order" or to the
Qingming Festival The Qingming festival or Ching Ming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English (sometimes also called Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestors' Day), is a traditional Chinese festival observed by the Han Chinese of mainland China, Hong Ko ...
. Other translations have been suggested: * ''Along the river during Qingming Festival'' * ''Going Upriver on the Qingming Festival'' * ''Life along the Bian River at the Qingming Festival'' * ''Life Along the Bian River at the Pure Brightness Festival'' * ''Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival'' * ''Upper River during Qing Ming Festival'' * ''Spring Festival on the River'' * ''Spring Festival Along the River'' * ''Peace Reigns Over the River'' During the late 1960s, the Taipei Palace Museum released a series of books (later digitized as CD-ROM), videos, and stamps about the scroll that translated it loosely as ''A City of Cathay''. There is further discussion of the painting's meaning and content, questioning three things that had been accepted about the original Song dynasty painting: that the city depicted is
Kaifeng Kaifeng () is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, China. It is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China, having been the capital eight times in history, and is best known for having been the Chinese capital during the Nort ...
; it was painted before the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127, and it depicts the Qingming Festival. Some scholars have further suggested that the city depicted is an idealized non-existent city; that it was painted after the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127; and that it depicts a scene in early autumn. However, another study replied that the city depicted is indeed Kaifeng, but that the painting depicts a day in the Qingming solar term of the
Chinese calendar The traditional Chinese calendar (also known as the Agricultural Calendar 曆; 农历; ''Nónglì''; 'farming calendar' Former Calendar 曆; 旧历; ''Jiùlì'' Traditional Calendar 曆; 老历; ''Lǎolì'', is a lunisolar calendar ...
, but not the Qingming Festival itself. An interpretation published in 2013 proposed that the painting was a subtle entreaty to the emperor to recognize dangerous trends beneath the surface of prosperity. Since Kaifeng depended on grain from the far south, the painting showed only a lowly official was on duty at the docks, only a few guards were stationed at the city gate and the docks and did not appear to be alert. The term "Qingming" did not refer to the solar term but was taken from the phrase 清明之世 ("A bright and enlightened era") from the ''
Book of the Later Han The ''Book of the Later Han'', also known as the ''History of the Later Han'' and by its Chinese name ''Hou Hanshu'' (), is one of the Twenty-Four Histories and covers the history of the Han dynasty from 6 to 189 CE, a period known as the Later ...
'', and the name of the painting was ironic. The wooden bridge depicted in the original version was reconstructed by a team of engineers and documented by the PBS television show ''
NOVA A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...
'' during their ''
Secrets of Lost Empires ''Secrets of Lost Empires'' is a two-part television series produced by PBS Nova, Boston (WGBH). Both series explore experimentally how ancient civilizations achieved notable constructions without modern machinery and construction methods. Eac ...
'' series.


See also

*
Chinese painting Chinese painting () is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as ''guó huà'' (), meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western style ...
* Culture of the Song dynasty


References


References and further reading

* Online at University of British Columbi
Open Collections
* * * * * * * * * * *


External links


The Palace Museum, Beijing

The National Palace Museum, Taiwan
* Interactive paintings from the Harvard Universitybr>one
on June 6, 2020) an



at the Columbia University
Interactive site with versions by Qiu Ying and the Qing Court Version in the National Palace Museum, Taibei

''Along the River During the Qingming Festival''
at China Online Museum {{DEFAULTSORT:Along The River During The Qingming Festival 12th-century paintings Bridges in art Camels in art Culture in Kaifeng Farming in art Maritime paintings Paintings by Zhang Zeduan Paintings in China Religious festivals in China Song dynasty paintings Works about festivals