Animated Qingming Scroll Exhibited in Taipei

Visitors watch the animated version of ancient painting Riverside Scene at the Qingming Festival in Taipei, southeast China's Taiwan, June 30, 2011. The animated version of the Qingming scroll, a highly renowned piece of Chinese painting dating back some 900 years ago, started to be exhibited in Taipei on Thursday. The painting will be projected onto a six-meter-high and 110-meter-wide screen, magnified by 10 times of the scroll's original size. (Xinhua/Li Mingfang)

Remakes

Due to its high artistic reputation, the painting has produced several later versions that copied the style of the original. One of the remakes was painted during the Ming Dynasty (14th to 17th centuries). This version has a length of 6.7 meters, longer than the original. It also replaced the scenery from the Song Dynasty to that of the Ming Dynasty. The clothing, boats and carts in the remade 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 that of 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.[11]

Another version by five Qing Dynasty court painters (Chen Mu, Sun Hu, Jin Kun, Dai Hong and Cheng Zhidao) was presented to the Emperor Qianlong on 15 January 1737. This version was later moved, along with many other artifacts, to the National Palace Museum in Taipei in 1949,[12] shown below.

There are many more people, over 4000, in the Qing remake, which also is much larger (at 11 metres by 35 cm, or 37 ft by 1 ft).[13] The leftmost third of this version is within the palace, with buildings and people appearing 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.