Along

Along the River During the Qingming Festival (Traditional: 清明上河圖, Simplified:清明上河图)

Zhang Zeduan, 1085-1145

Panoramic painting

24.8 × 528.7 cm

Palace Museum, Beijing

Along the River During the Qingming Festival (traditional Chinese: 清明上河圖; simplified Chinese: 清明上河图; pinyin: Qīngmíng Shànghé Tú) is the title of several panoramic paintings, the original version generally attributed to the Song Dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan (1085-1145). It captures the daily life of people from the Song period at the capital, Bianjing, today's Kaifeng. The theme celebrates the festive spirit and worldly commotion at the Qingming Festival, rather than the holiday's ceremonial aspects, such as tomb sweeping and prayers. The entire piece was painted in handscroll format, and the content reveals the lifestyle of all levels of the society from rich to poor as well as different economic activities in rural areas and the city. It offers glimpses of period clothing and architecture. As an artistic creation, the piece has been revered, and court artists of subsequent dynasties have made several re-interpretive replicas. The painting is famous because of its geometrically accurate images of boats, bridges, shops, and scenery. Because of its fame, it has been called "China's Mona Lisa".^[1]

Like the Mona Lisa, the Qingming scroll was sold between numerous private owners, before it finally returned to public ownership. The Qingming scroll is historically notable as being among the paintings from the former imperial collection that remain in public ownership in mainland China; it was a particular favorite of emperor Puyi, who took it with him to Manchukuo and thus kept the Song Dynasty original (24.8 by 528.7 cm)^[2] out of the collection of the National Palace Museum. It was later re-purchased in 1945 and kept at the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City.

About 20 to 30 variations on this topic by artists of subsequent dynasties were made. Several Ming and Qing versions can be found in public and private collections around the world ^[3]. Each version follows the overall composition of the original fairly faithfully; however, the details often vary widely. The Song Dynasty original and the Qing version, in the Beijing and Taipei Palace Museums respectively, are regarded as national treasures and are only exhibited for brief periods every few years. For instance, the wait in Beijing to see the painting was three and a half hours.^[4]

Contents 1 Features of the Song Original 2 Hosting 3 Remakes 4 Gallery 5 Title's Translations 6 Analysis 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

Features of the Song Original

In the 5.28-meter long picture, there are 814 humans, 28 boats, 60 animals, 30 buildings, 20 vehicles, nine sedan chairs and 170 trees drawn ^[5][6]. 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 Shangtu 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 mast not completely lowered, threatening to crash into the bridge. The crowds on the bridge and along the riverside are shouting and gesturing towards the boat. Someone near the apex of the bridge lowers a rope to the outstretched arms of the crew below.^[7]

In addition to the shops and diners, there are hotels, 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 coolies at the river bank, pulling the larger ships.

Hosting

In a rare move, the Song original was exhibited in Hong Kong from 29 June to mid-August 2007 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of its transfer to the People's Republic of China. It is estimated that the costs of shipping the painting have run into the millions of Hong Kong dollars in addition to the cost of insuring this piece of priceless art, which is estimated to be in the tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars.

Remakes

The original painting has other later versions that copied the style of the original. One of the remakes was painted during the Ming Dynasty (14th to 17th centuries). This remake 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. The clothing, boats and carts in the remade painting show a wealthier city. 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.^[8]

Another version by five Qing Dynasty court painters (Chen Mu, Sun Hu, Jin Kun, Dai Hong and Cheng Zhidao) was presented to the Emperor Qianlong on 15 January 1737. This version was later moved, along with many other artifacts, to the National Palace Museum in Taipei in 1949,^[9] shown below.

There are a lot more people, over 4000, in the Qing remake, which is also much bigger (at 11 metres by 35 cm, or 37 ft by 1 ft).^[10] The leftmost third of this version is within the palace, with buildings and people refined and elegant. Most people within the castle are women, with some well-dressed officials. On the contrary, in the original Song version, the leftmost side is still the busy city.

In April 1742, a poem was added to the right-most end of the Qing remake. The poem was apparently composed by Emperor Qianlong; the calligraphy is in the running script style, and is in the hand of Liang Shizheng (梁詩正), a prominent court official and frequent companion of Emperor Qianlong. The poem reads as follows:

Chinese	Pinyin	English
蜀錦裝金壁 吳工聚碎金 謳歌萬井富 城闕九重深 盛事誠觀止 遺踪借探尋 當時誇豫大 此日歎徽欽	Shǔjǐn zhuāng jīn bì Wú gōng jù suìjīn ōugē wànjǐng fù chéngquè jiǔchóng shēn shèngshì chéng guānzhǐ yízōng jiè tànxún dāngshí kuā Yù dà cǐrì tàn Huī Qīn	A wall of gold has been mounted on Shu brocade. Craftsmen from Wu collect spare change, In order to pay tribute to the abundance of ten thousand families. The watch towers of the city rise to great heights. The bustling scene is truly impressive. It is an opportunity to explore the remnants of days gone by. At that time, people marveled at the size of Yu, And now, we lament the fates of Hui and Qin.

Gallery

Title's Translations

Scholars have disputed the accuracy of the translation of painting's name; the word Qingming can refer to either the Qingming Festival or to peace and order. Two types of translations have been proposed by scholars: Going Upriver on the Qingming Festival/Spring Festival on the River^[3] or Peace Reigns Over the River.

Traditionally, three things have been believed about the original painting:

• The city depicted is Kaifeng.
• It was painted before the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty in 1127.
• It depicts the Qingming Festival.

More recent scholarship challenges all three of those assertions:

• The city depicted is an idealized non-existent city.^[11]
• It was painted after the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty in 1127.
• It depicts a scene in early autumn.

During the late 1960s, when the Taipei Palace Museum released a series of books (later digitized as CD-ROM), videos, and stamps about the scroll, it was simply translated as A City of Cathay.^[10][12][13]

Analysis

The wooden bridge depicted in the original version would later be rebuilt by a team of engineers, documented by the PBS television show NOVA during their Secrets of Lost Empires series.^[14]

See also

• Culture of the Song Dynasty

References

• "International Conference on Qingming Shanghe Tu and Song Dynasty Genre Paintings", Beijing, October 10-12, 2005, China Heritage Newsletter.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Along the River During the Qingming Festival

• The Palace Museum, Beijing
• The National Palace Museum, Taiwan
• Metropolitan Museum

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