"Shuicheng Tu" By Wang Shizhen And Ming Dynasty Canal Journey

This study is chiefly concerned with a magnificent landscape painting,Shuicheng tu(journey by water)by Wang Shizhen,which depicts 84 scenes along the Grand Canal from Wang's Xiaoqi yuan(a villa)to Tongzhou,Beijing,and which,by far,is the only Ming Dynasty painting that shows the entire Grand Canal.In previous studies,the work was used as a case study of either a tourism map or Wang's art sponsorship activities,but those studies rarely paid enough attention to the particularities of it.This paper is divided into two parts: in the first part,I analyze the characteristics of the schema and the style of the pen and ink,comparing the documentary records of relevant paintings and their formations,and determining that the work is totally a set of natural paintings created by ancient literati,completely different from the real landscape paintings and travelogues created in studios.From the perspective of literati and tourism culture to the perspective of scholars and political culture,this paper attempts to reveal that Wang,as a professional scholar,could not neglect the external factors in the planning and creation of the work,as well as the symbolic significance of the journey by boat to the ancient scholar.The second part is an investigation of the ancient Grand Canal journey caused by the study of the work,which is not only a study of the canal travel culture in Ming Dynasty,but also an exploration of the visual cultural history of the Grand Canal.On the one hand,with the aid of the canal travel diaries of scholars in Ming Dynasty,the actual situation of canal travel in Ming Dynasty is inspected;on the other hand,based on the work,other Ming and Qing Dynasty's paintings describing the scenery along the canal are compared,which fully shows that the canal was not an ideal tourist route in ancient times,and the Grand Canal itself is not the scenery in the eyes of the ancients,but an aesthetic object,a product of modern ideas.It can be said that the work provides an excellent visual case for us to understand the ancient canal journey;at the same time,the investigation of the Ming Dynasty canal journey also provides us with a practical cultural context to understand the work.