The Qianlong Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour: Imperial Handscrolls from the Qing's Age of Prosperity

"The handscroll painting Emperor Qianlong's Southern Inspection Tour has been collected by National Museum of China. The royal court painter Xu Yang was ordered to ""create paintings after imperial poetries"" to record the historical event of the Qianlong Emperor's first southern inspection tour. The size of the painting is grand, and the imagery is in great detail. Xu Yang adopted traditional Chinese painting techniques to depict the scenes of the Qianlong Emperor's visit to the provinces, following customs, inspecting river engineering project, worshipping in Dayu Temple, reviewing military parade, touring around Hu Mountain in Zhejiang. This masterpiece historical painting reflects the authentic political, economic, cultural and other social features of the eastern empire in the mid18th century. It provides historians with valuable historical image documentary for the study of the social life and economic development at that time. The author of Imperial Documentary Handscroll: The Qianlong Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour is Zhu Min, senior researcher at the National Museum of China. She is one of the few experts in the Museum who specializes in this work. The original work includes 12 paintings and is 154.17 meters in length. Two volumes are contained in a folding case. One volume aims to present the painting by selecting the most important part in accordionbound edition to allow readers to flip through the plates. The other volume in ancient thread binding delves into the history of this painting."