There are carts, sedan chairs, chariots, men leading oxen and yet more beautifully rendered buildings and trees. People carry large baskets balanced on poles across their shoulders. There is a busy scene near the far left of the scroll, with people walking and standing in the street and in buildings and riding or herding beasts of burden, including camels and donkeys. There are more shops, a tax office, and people loading cargo into boats. The famous bridge scene from ‘Along the River During the Qingming Festival’ ( Wikipedia )Īs the scroll unrolls to the left, the area of the city around the gate comes into view. A figure on the bridge extends a rope to the crew on the ship. The people on bridge are animated and gesturing, apparently concerned that an approaching boat with a raised mast is in danger of colliding with the bridge. The focus of the scroll is near the center, where the Rainbow Bridge stretches across the river. There are many boats of different types in the river all along from near the beginning of the town until about two-thirds of the way to the end of the scroll, when the scene shifts to the main city street and gate. Also on sale are bows and arrows, ornaments, paintings, medicine, needles and dyed fabrics. Soon businesses are revealed that have for sale many types of goods, including food and wine, cookware, musical instruments, gold and silver and lanterns. The way broadens from a country path into the road leading into the city, where buildings and more people appear.Īs the painting enters the town, a panorama of the larger river with boats, more people and more buildings unfolds. In the rural sections are a small bridge with a stream, fields with crops and bucolic country folk, including pig herders, goatherds and farmers. To the far left is the bustling city and its gate. The painting unrolls to reveal three main sections: a rural area to the right, businesses and other activity in the middle, then the river and its traffic and bridge. But Professor Valerie Hansen of Yale University says an alternative translation of qingming is “peaceful and orderly.” So, says Professor Hansen, the title of the scroll may mean Peace Reigns over the River, the museum site says.ĭetails from ‘Along the River During the Qingming Festival’ ( Wikimedia Commons )
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The website China Online Museum says qingming translates as “clear-bright” and shanghe tu is “going-along-the-river-picture.” Scholars have said the painting’s title is in reference to the Qingming Festival. The painting provides a snapshot of the town in one lively moment.
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Depicted are people, animals, a river, boats, and buildings in the countryside, city outskirts and city center. It shows the lighter side of the festival as opposed to people brushing off their ancestors’ graves. The subject of the painting is a landscape in and just outside the city of Bianjing, which is known today as Kaifeng, in Henan Provice, during the Qingming Festival, which honored ancestors. Some of the reproductions of this most famous Chinese painting are famous in themselves.Ī reproduction of the famous Qingming landscape displayed in Bao Mo Garden in Guangzhou City, China.
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Today such precious, old scroll paintings are laid out on tables under glass in museums. It measures 24.8 centimeters high (9.76 inches) by 5.29 meters long (208 inches) and was meant to be held and unrolled by hand and viewed from right to left. Zhang Zeduan, who lived from 1085 to 1145, painted the scroll. It is on display until October 12, 2015, in the imperial Forbidden City in Beijing, which is the capital of China today. The painting is sometimes called China’s Mona Lisa. The painting, titled Along the River during the Qingming Festival, has been copied several times, but the original is rarely displayed because it is so fragile. People lined up to wait for six hours to see one of China’s most famous artworks, an exquisite 12 th century scroll painting depicting the Song Dynasty capital of Haifeng during the festival of Qingming.