Up the River of Time

Qingming shanghe (Up the River during Qingming), dubbed China’s Mona Lisa, is a painting whose primordial version is attributed to Zhang Zeduan, a painter who lived during the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). It is so revered that to this day there exist more than one hundred handscroll paintings with this title, including the original and later versions produced during the late Ming through the High Qing.

Up the River of Time is the first study in any language to treat the entire cultural constellation of Qingming shanghe as a painting tradition. Cheng-hua Wang investigates how the original Northern Song version—deemed a classic in art-historical research—and its later iterations shaped the norms of painting, triggered cultural associations, fostered the genre of cityscapes, and redefined the meanings of “reproduction” and “forgery.”

By studying the thematic links between the painting’s various versions and tracing their development over several centuries, Wang leads us to revisit China’s painting history. Such a focus that pivots toward broad considerations of thematic and cultural significance prompts a reassessment of what defines artistic value. Over time, Qingming shanghe catalysed a new artistic culture in China.