Focus on this artwork and analyze the Analysis and questions.
Scholars have studied the painting carefully in the second half of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century but do not agree on many basic points. Scholars question the accuracy of the translation of the painting's name; the word Qingming may refer to either "peace and order" or to the Qingming Festival. Other translations have been suggested:Along the river during Qingming Festival
Going Upriver on the Qingming Festival
Life along the Bian River at the Qingming Festival
Life Along the Bian River at the Pure Brightness Festival
Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival
Upper River during Qing Ming Festival
Spring Festival on the River
Spring Festival Along the River
Peace Reigns Over the RiverDuring the late 1960s, the Taipei Palace Museum released a series of books (later digitized as CD-ROM), videos, and stamps about the scroll that translated it loosely as A City of Cathay.There is further discussion of the painting's meaning and content, questioning three things that had been accepted about the original Song dynasty painting: that the city depicted is Kaifeng; it was painted before the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127, and it depicts the Qingming Festival.Some scholars have further suggested that the city depicted is an idealized non-existent city;  that it was painted after the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127; and that it depicts a scene in early autumn. However, another study replied that the city depicted is indeed Kaifeng, but that the painting depicts a day in the Qingming solar term of the Chinese calendar, but not the Qingming Festival itself.An interpretation published in 2013 proposed that the painting was a subtle entreaty to the emperor to recognize dangerous trends beneath the surface of prosperity. Since Kaifeng depended on grain from the far south, the painting showed only a lowly official was on duty at the docks,  only a few guards were stationed at the city gate and the docks and did not appear to be alert. The term "Qingming" did not refer to the solar term but was taken from the phrase 清明之世 ("A bright and enlightened era") from the Book of the Later Han, and the name of the painting was ironic.
The wooden bridge depicted in the original version was reconstructed by a team of engineers and documented by the PBS television show NOVA during their Secrets of Lost Empires series.
Book of the Later Han Song dynasty Qing painting Secrets of Lost Empires NOVA Qingming Northern Song Kaifeng Qin solar term Taipei PBS Chinese calendar Palace Museum Northern Song dynasty Qingming Festival