Going upriver at the qingming festival

Chinese Art History Paper

Art H 311 Paper Assignment

Recommended length: 5-7 pages double-spaced.

Topic: Zhang Zeduan’s Going Upriver at the Qingming Festival.

You are at liberty to approach the topic in any way you like.

The comments and questions below are meant only to suggest some possibilities.

You might for instance discuss the way Zhang uses the handscroll format—a form of picture which cannot be taken in at a single glance but instead is read, more or less like a book, two or three feet at a time, moving from right to left. You know a variety of examples already: Admonitions of the Instructress to the Palace Ladies, in which pictures alternate with moralizing texts; The Goddess of the Luo River, which might be said to illustrate a well-known story. Two further examples you will see shortly are Xia Gui's Twelve Views from a Thatched Cottage, in which landscape views are complemented by phrases supplied in the handwriting of an emperor, and Chen Rong's Nine Dragons, which does not depend on a text but which probably does count on our knowing something about the painter.

How does a painter cope with a format that is continuous? Particularly if he is not punctuating it with texts? As we move from right to left through Going Upriver at the Qingming Festival, are we moving steadily through space? Are we moving steadily through time?

A novelist is a failure if his readers are too bored to turn the page. How does Zhang Zeduan keep his viewers unrolling his picture?

Is the picture self-contained? Does it depend on a text or any external source of information? What is the subject of the picture? Is the scroll complete? (Look at the late copy that is displayed next to it)

Why was the painting done? Who was the audience for it? What are the painter's aims likely to have been?

The reading by Gernet (week 6) bears on the content of the painting. The article by Mote (week 9) has interesting things to say about another city.

NOTE A facsimile of the Qingming Festival scroll will be available for study in the East Asia Library. Ask the circulation desk for access. In the present PDF the review images following page 3 are slices from the scroll. You should use them only as a reference when you’re revising your paper. You must study the facsimile in order to understand the whole composition.

A note on the documentation of the Qingming Festival scroll

In its present condition—a concluding section may have been lost—the painting is untitled and unsigned. The identification of the city as Huizong's capital Bianjing (modern Kaifeng) is based on written descriptions of Bianjing (passages from them are translated in Jacques Gernet's Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion): the evidence is circumstantial but persuasive. The attribution to Zhang Zeduan is made in the earliest of the many inscriptions added at the end of the scroll, a colophon dated 1186. Since this colophon is our only external source of information about Zhang, I transcribe it in full (this translation and the next come from Roderick Whitfield's 1965 Princeton dissertation on the painting):

“Zhang Zeduan of the Hanlin Academy, zi Zhengdao, was a native of

Dongwu. When he was young he read books and came to study at the capital. Later

he practised painting, taking special pleasure in boats, carts, markets, bridges, city walls, and streets. He became one of the masters. According to Mr. Xiang's Pinglun tuhua ji, Regatta on the West Lake at Hangzhou and Going Upriver at the Qingming Festival belong

to the divine class; collectors should treasure them.

“On the day after Qingming in the year bingwu of the Dading period [1186], written by Zhang Zhu of Yanshan.”

The title Going Upriver at the Qingming Festival is taken from this colophon because it seems to fit the subject matter of the painting. The next few colophons are poems; then comes one which reads:

“On the right is the handscroll painted by the Hanlin scholar Zhang Zeduan of the former Song dynasty, entitled Going Upriver at the Qingming Festival. In the Dading period [1161-1190] of the Jin dynasty, Zhang Zhu of Yanshan in his colophon said that this was the one mentioned for selection in the divine class in Mr. Xiang's Pinglun tuhua ji. Now I, Zhun, in the year xinmao [1351] of the Zhizheng period [1341-1368], having lived a long time in Ji, and having often sought out famous paintings of ancient and modern times in order to refresh my ears and eyes, it happened that someone showed me this painting. He said that the painting had at first been in the Yuan [1279-1368] imperial collection and then was taken by an official mounter, who substituted a copy and sold the original to a high official named so-and-so. The latter afterwards went as prefect to Zhending, when the person in charge of his collection once more stole it and sold it to a Mr. Chen of Wulin. Some years after Chen had obtained it, he was somewhat sorely pressed on account of other matters and, hearing that the prefect was about to return, feared a speedy retaliation and thought he had best sell it to some scholar or gentleman. I heard this and emptied my purse to buy it, since paintings were my passion during my whole life. In front of the scroll there was a title by Huizong and following it several poems by scholars of the late Jin period [1126-1234], with a number of private seals after the poems.

“The compositional arrangement, the distinction of distance and height in the city walls, the markets, the bridges, houses and cottages, as well as the distinction in size and importance of grass, trees, horses, oxen, donkeys, and camels, some standing still and some walking, the coming and going of boats and carts, all these are shown in their complete characters, yet no one could enumerate them all. This is a vast view of Bianjing in the time of its prosperity. After the Zhu-Liang [907-921] its decay was extreme. But with the nurturing of the emperors of the Song for a hundred years, it began to reach the climax of prosperity. The efforts of its ministers, the prosperity and increase of its people, the refinement of its customs can be imagined in all their variety from this painting. I know that the intent of the painter was by looking at that period to proclaim it to later ages. Or if not, then he was aware of the danger of the time and thought to exhaust his skill in order to distinguish himself from the mass of historians.

“He exerted his skill to the utmost, not omitting a single hair. How could this be the accomplishment of a morning and an evening? The trouble bestowed on it must have been great. Then He, Cai, and his son You ruled the country with villainous power, causing the people to suffer. The barbarians were strong and proud, and the calamities suffered by Bian cannot bear to be spoken of. When I think that at a time when this painting had only just been completed, the old peaceful state of things up to then suddenly became mist and weeds, I cannot overcome my emotions. At that time the treasures and precious objects from inside and outside the city were almost completely destroyed, only this painting alone survived the dangers to the present day, having come through two hundred years without serious damage. Was not this intended by fate? After the sack that part of the country was for a long time not under Han [i.e. Chinese] rule and was affected by war and struggles. If one wished to seek what this painting imitated in art, there would be nowhere to find it. Alas! although the decay or rise of cities is linked with the workings of fate, yet the unwisdom of men's plans in each case is also a cause. That the cry of the cuckoo was heard at the Tianjin bridge, that the Zongning [1101-1107] and Xuanhe [1119-1126] periods suffered under cruel rule, was not this begun in the tragic mistakes of the great ministers of the Xining [1068-1078] and Yuanfang [1078-1086] periods? There must also be someone to bear the blame that things went so far that Bian was conquered and never rose again.

“Now all under heaven is united, the capital of former times enjoys the imperial blessing and its people and wealth should be no less than then. Unfortunately I have not been able to visit its site in order to gaze on its prosperity, therefore I take pleasure in the skill of brush and ink in this handscroll and have because of this shown my emotions in words. On the fifteenth day of the ninth month of the year renchen [1352] of the Zhizheng period, Yang Zhun, a sushih of Yuhua in Xichang, made this colophon.”

Among other things, this colophon tells us that in 1352 the painting carried a title written by Huizong. If this information is correct (if the handwriting was really Huizong's), then it would assure us that the painting once belonged to Huizong, and thus that it could not have been done as an exercise in nostalgia after his reign. Chinese viewers look at the painting nostalgically to this day, but if it was painted in Huizong's reign, before the fall of Kaifeng, nostalgia was not the mood of the painter or his patron; it is instead the mood of this colophon, written 250 years later, and of the many still later colophons.

2