Zhang Zeduan

Who they are

A Northern Song painter immortalized by one work, Along the River During the Qingming Festival. This handscroll over five meters long, like a slowly moving camera, gathers up the whole street life of the Song capital Bianjing (today Kaifeng) at Qingming time: crowds thronging the arched bridge, grain boats on the river, taverns and shops along the streets, farmers to market and officials on donkeys — over eight hundred figures, each with its own bearing. It paints not emperors and generals but the breathing of one city, the summit of Chinese genre painting.

Key stories

One Painting That Holds a Whole City

Along the River During the Qingming Festival opens on the fields outside the city, passes the Bian River, the Rainbow Bridge, and the gate, and enters at last the bustling market — over eight hundred people of every trade crowd its five meters. You can make out the porter’s carrying pole, a shop’s signboard, a boat and a crowd nearly colliding on the bridge. Zhang Zeduan wrote not a word, yet lets us, nearly a thousand years on, walk in as if on the scene and see the living daily life of the Northern Song with our own eyes.

Relationships

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

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