Along the River During Qingming Festival

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 on 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 reinterpretive 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 one of the few paintings from the former imperial collection that remains 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 Northern 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]

Features of the Song Original

In the 5.28-meter long picture, there were 814 humans, 28 boats, 60 animals, 30 more buildings, 20 vehicles, 9 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, inn-keepers, 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 market, secondhand goods, cookware, bows and arrows, lanterns, music instruments, gold and silver, ornament, dyed fabrics, paintings, medicine, needles, artifacts, and 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 in 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 HKD.

Remakes

The original painting has other later versions that copied the style of the original. One of the remakes was painted in Ming Dynasty (14 to 17th century). This remake has a length of 6.7 meters, longer than the original. It also replaced the scenery from Song Dynasty to Ming Dynasty. The clothing of humans, boats and carts in the remake 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 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 from the Qing Dynasty (1736 version) by five Qing Dynasty court painters (Chen Mei, Sun Hu, Jin Kun, Dai Hung and Chen Zhidao) and presented to the Emperor Qianlong, was moved to Taiwan 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 one-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.

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.

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]

Contents

Features of the Song Original

Hosting

Remakes

Title's Translations

Analysis

See also

References

External links