As the representative work of Zhang Zeduan, a famous palace painter living in the late Northern Song Dynasty, Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is a handscroll of painting reflecting the life and customs of the Northern Song Dynasty. The handscroll of painting, measuring 24.8cm wide and 528.7cm long, is painted on silk with a light color background. It is now kept in the National Palace Museum in Beijing.

In a form of long handscroll of painting, the work adopts a splashed clairvoyance painting composition method to take complex sceneries into a unified and varied frame and gives a detailed description of the prosperous vision and natural scenes of Bianliang, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the Bian River. The entire painting is composed of three sections: the spring scenery of Bianliang suburban area, the busy dock of Bian River, and busy downtown streets. From representative aspects such as commerce, traffic, inland river transportation, and architecture, the painting gives an integrated showing of the blooming and busy visions of suburban area, downtown, and waterway of Bianliang as the political and economic center of the Northern Song Dynasty, presenting in front of us the detailed and vivid social life of Bianliang over 1,000 years ago.

In the 5-plus-meter-long painting, there are in total over 550 persons in different clothes and expressions engaged in different activities, showing a proper spacing through an artful painting composition method. In addition to the persons mentioned above, there are still 50 ~ 60 livestock including cattle, horses, mules, and donkeys, and more than 40 carriages and vessels in different sizes presented on the painting. The buildings, bridges, and city towers possess their respective characteristics and show the architectural properties of the Northern Song Dynasty.

As a representative of realism among Chinese paintings, Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival has exerted a great influence over the creation of genre paintings in later generations and provided the studies on the economy and folk customs of the Northern Song Dynasty with precious and direct materials. Therefore, it enjoys a very high historical and artistic value, and is an art treasure renowned both at home and abroad.

Since its birth, Riverside Scenes at Qingming Festival, for five times, has been taken into palaces and, for as many as four times, stolen away. In spite of the dramatic fate, it is still intact and kept in the National Palace Museum as an art treasure of China.