A moving journey through an ancient painting

Picture: "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" cultural and creative tea set. Courtesy of the Palace Museum

Picture: "Painting Tour of Thousands of Miles of Rivers and Mountains - Forbidden City Immersion Art Exhibition" exhibition site. Photo by Zhang Lian

Pictured: Part of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains". Profile picture

From tea sets and silk scarves to exhibitions and dance dramas, the cultural and creative development around the Northern Song Dynasty painting "Qianli Jiangshan Tu" collected in the Palace Museum has set off a boom again and again, attracting people to dig deeper into "Qianli Jiangshan Tu" and the story behind it, and triggering people's enthusiasm for traditional culture. Focusing on the cultural innovation practice of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", we can explore the ways of cultural relics revitalization and find the code for cultural relics to "come alive".

As Wang Yuegong, vice president of the Palace Museum, said, relying on the exhibition to develop cultural and creative products, books and digital products, and then continuously deriving and deepening the excavated cultural relics and cultural elements, and realizing cross-border cooperation and development, can promote the museum's cultural and creative development work to become more mature, comprehensive and systematic.

Tea sets, folding fans, and silk scarves were introduced

Green landscapes into daily life

The audience lined up in a long line just to see the style of "Qianli Jiangshan", which was the scene when the "Qianli Jiangshan - Special Exhibition of Green Landscape Paintings of Past Dynasties" was launched in September 2017. The exhibition hall is located in the main hall of the Palace Museum's Noon Gate and the East and West Goose Wing Building, divided into two phases, a total of 86 sets of cultural relics are exhibited, with the Northern Song Dynasty painter Wang Ximeng's "Map of a Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" as the center, systematically combing and showing the development of Chinese landscape paintings in previous dynasties.

Along with the planning of the exhibition, the Palace Museum also launched the research and development of cultural and creative products with the same theme. "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" special-shaped tea set, imitation mountain stone shape production, special-shaped teapot and fair cup are being placed as practical utensils, upside down can be used for home decoration. The multi-functional art table mat of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" not only reflects the beautiful artistic conception of the original painting, but also restores the brilliant colors of the original work. Qianli Jiangshan art folding fan, the fan surface adopts the almost lost "Hualuo" process, its jacquard pattern design originates from the Palace Museum's collection of Qing Dynasty tangled branches peony pattern Hualuo cultural relics, the fan pattern is designed according to the "Qianli Jiangshan Map", the Fan surface of the Hualuo fan is finely textured, light and transparent, of which the Hualuo handmade fan sleeve, with the silk tribute satin lining, and the folding fan is natural and echoes. The art scarf of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" adopts 100% mulberry silk, which feels smooth, delicate and overhanging, and better integrates elegance and literary atmosphere.

The classic turquoise color of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" is also very suitable for all kinds of jewelry and daily necessities. The Palace Museum has developed a series of jewelry including necklaces, earrings, rings and other jewelry, including rulers, paperweights, pen holders, sticky note paper bricks and other stationery series, including handmade soap, handbags, fireless aromatherapy and other daily necessities, so that green landscapes into daily life, into the homes of ordinary people.

Wang Yuegong introduced that the "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" series of cultural and creative products has gradually become a star series of products with rich products, diverse types, popular and iterations in the Cultural and Creative System of the Forbidden City. In order to deepen and enrich the cultural elements of "a thousand miles of rivers and mountains" and better disseminate them, the Palace Museum has also carried out many innovative cooperation projects on the same theme.

Crossover exhibitions, games, music

Digital technology enables an immersive experience

With the increasingly rich types and varieties of cultural and creative development, the derivative development of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" combines with science and technology to seek cross-border breakthroughs and present it to the public in various forms such as games, music, and digital exhibitions.

"E-truth Miaobi Qianshan" is a mobile game jointly launched by the Palace Museum and NetEase. Wang Yuegong introduced that this light puzzle game based on the creation of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" meets the preferences of more public, especially young people, and helps to promote the popularization of traditional culture. "The experts and game production team of the Palace Museum spent a lot of energy to design this game, and the production team borrowed from the ancient painting creation techniques, turned the static pictures into dynamic presentations through technical means, and tried their best to restore the true appearance of the ancient paintings and create an experience of 'like a painting'." The design also reduces the complexity of the game's operation and the difficulty of solving the puzzle, so that players can enjoy the game process more purely. Wang Yuegong said.

In addition to games, in July 2018, the Palace Museum also co-hosted the "Ancient Painting Club Singing" Music Innovation Competition with Tencent Innovation Competition and QQ Music. The Palace Museum has selected 10 precious paintings to provide "singing" materials for the contestants. Among them, with "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" as the creative blueprint, the Chinese style theme song "Danqing Qianli" was created, which expressed traditional painting in a modern way and opened a cultural dialogue spanning thousands of years.

The iteration around "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" is still escalating. In December 2019, the Palace Museum held a special exhibition entitled "Stars and Thousands of Miles - The Forbidden City and the Maritime Silk Road", in which the digital art exhibition "Qianli Jiangshan Tu 3.0" combines the advantages of traditional art and digital technology, vividly reproducing the majesty of the peak works of the Song Dynasty's green landscapes, allowing the audience to feel like being in the "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" and bringing a new artistic experience.

Wang Yuegong introduced that in August 2021, the digital IP of "Qianli Jiangshan Tu 3.0" was upgraded to "Painting Tour of Qianli Jiangshan - Forbidden City Immersive Art Exhibition" and landed in Chongqing, integrating local cultural elements and richer and more interactive digital technology interactive content. "The core exhibition item 'Shengshi Long Scroll' presents a newly upgraded 'Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains' huge dynamic digital scroll on the wall with a length of 50 meters and a height of 5 meters. This is also a long scroll of cultural relics themes with real-time hierarchical rendering core technology and time transformation system, allowing the audience to feel the ancient famous paintings that have moved. Panoramic experience immersive space 'Danqing Theater', with 'Yunyou Jiangshan' as the main exhibition item, dissolves the three-dimensional particles of "Qianli Jiangshan Map" to present a three-dimensional and vivid digital landscape, and builds an experience of traveling through the clouds in the thousands of miles of rivers and mountains for the audience. Wang Yuegong said.

The dance drama was well received

Traditional culture docks with the aesthetics of the times

"No name, no money, only this one volume; green for a thousand years, mountains and rivers are boundless." On the stage of the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Tiger, the excerpt of the dance poetry drama "Only This Green" - Dance Painting "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" made a stunning appearance. This dance and poetry drama, jointly produced by the Palace Museum, China Oriental Performing Arts Group Co., Ltd. and People's Network Co., Ltd., has received rave reviews since its premiere in August 2020.

The dance poetry drama "Only This Green" cuts into and traces the excellent traditional Chinese culture from the perspective of modern people. On the stage, the dancers outlined a rich layer of paintings through exquisite dance, and the conscientious cultural and museum workers of the Palace Museum and the diligent ancient craftsmen intertwined into a humanistic picture. The audience followed a modern Forbidden City researcher, the exhibition volume person, following the outline of the chapter of "exhibition volume, asking seals, singing silk, searching for stones, learning pens, quenching ink, and entering paintings", wandering in the legendary traditional Chinese aesthetics. Jing Xiaoyong, secretary of the party committee and chairman of China Oriental Performing Arts Group Co., Ltd., said that the dance drama uses the stories of ordinary laborers to make cultural relics shine and evoke the most precious cultural memories and beliefs in people's hearts.

It is worth mentioning that "Only This Green" has attracted the attention of many young people, and the difficult "green waist" in the program has become a hot topic on the Internet. Meng Qingyang, the star of "Only This Green", believes that "Only This Green" is a review and tribute to China's excellent traditional culture, and tells the precipitation, discovery and inheritance of culture in the form of dance poetry. "As a young literary and art worker, it is an honor to pay tribute to and inherit the excellent traditional culture in our way, and to pass it on to the audience with enthusiasm." Meng Qingyang said.

The traditional cultural fever driven by "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" continues to ferment. The first round of performances of "Only This Green" was performed 50 times in 16 cities including Nantong, Shanghai, Suzhou and Foshan. The second round of national tour has entered nearly 40 cities such as Haikou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Hefei and other nearly 120 performances, and many performances have been difficult to find.

Wang Yuegong said that in the work of developing culture and creativity, it is always necessary to persist in carrying forward china's excellent traditional culture, that is, keeping right, and at the same time, we must work the word creation, dig deep into our own characteristic cultural resources, keep up with the pace of the development of the times, find the integration point between tradition and modernity, take into account cultural connotations, digital technology, and practical values in specific work, and constantly promote the creative transformation and innovative development of China's outstanding traditional culture. (Reporter Wang Jue)

Source: People's Daily