The National Museum of China is now showing an animated movie based on an ancient painting that depicts scenes from a Chinese emperor's grand visit to a part of his kingdom.

The 14-minute movie was derived from the first scroll of the Emperor Qianlong's Southern Inspection Tour, part of an epic series of paintings that has been housed in the museum since 1959, and traces the emperor's departure from Beijing for his trip to South China. It also allows visitors glimpses of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) glory.

The original series is composed of 12 paintings from the time, and was earlier placed at the National Museum of Chinese History, which was later merged into the NMC.

Scroll One: Departing Beijing The Royal Capital displays Qianlong's lavish entourage leaving the Forbidden City for the royal retreat. It is projected on a 30-meter-long and 4-meter-high screen at the museum's hall for digital displays, and is placed along with imitation paintings of the original work and with Scroll Six: Entering Suzhou along the Grand Canal.

The suite of Emperor Qianlong's Southern Inspection Tour includes 12 scrolls chronicling his first inspection of the southern part in 1751. It measures a total length of 154 meters.

Qianlong went on the trip to fulfill his filial duty accompanying his mother who wanted to travel to the picturesque locations. Also he emulated his grandfather, Emperor Kangxi, who made several southern inspections. The travel over 112 days, along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, covered more than 2,900 kilometers.

The emperor, himself a poet, composed more than 520 poems during the tour. He commissioned his court painter Xu Yang to visualize 12 pieces from them.

Xu recreated the spectacular scenes in which Qianlong felt the public mood, inspected local administrations and armies, reviewed river engineering projects, and visited temples and nature resorts. He employed a realistic approach in detailing a wide variety of subjects. His paintings provide vivid accounts of society in 18th-century China.

The digital remake provides details of costumes of court officials, ceremonial processions, life of the man in the street and natural landscapes of the time - all offered from the emperor's perspective by the painter.

The display is vivid, thanks to more than 2,500 3-D models of people and animals, according to Chen Lyusheng, deputy director of the National Museum of China.

The animation is a "blockbuster" of its kind, says Zhou Zhiqiang, the production's chief technical adviser. "We not only try to do a remake of the original piece in precision. We've also added a lot of background information that helps the audience to understand the importance of the tour, and the artistic value of the works."

For example, the narration explains the similarities and differences between the inspections of Kangxi and Qianlong. It comments on Qianlong's political achievements in merging the cultures of Han and Manchu ethnic groups.

Zhou, himself a respected narrator, narrates the movie. Previously he narrated for The Palace Museum, a well-acclaimed documentary series presented by China Central Television.

Chen says that the museum will digitize the monumental work's other scrolls in the coming years, and will incorporate more personalized and interactive technologies. The series of painting on Emperor Qianlong's southern inspection tour was created on both paper and silk. The silk pieces were scattered in different museums at home and across the world. For instance, Scroll Four: The Confluence of the Huai and Yellow Rivers and Scroll Six: Entering Suzhou Along the Grand Canal are kept at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The complete set of paper pieces had been preserved at the Palace Museum, which also houses an incomplete set of Emperor Kangxi's Southern Inspection Tour scrolls.

linqi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 01/20/2015 page21)