"Chronicles of Bianhe River"
In the spring of the first year of Zhenghe, Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty issued an imperial edict, pushing the 28-year-old Zhang Zeduan, who was waiting for an imperial edict from the painting academy, into the center of the storm.
"The painting depicts the prosperous times of Bianjing in a five-foot-long scroll, limited to three years."
On the day he wrote the pen, he saw military rations being exchanged for smuggled salt under Hongqiao. Behind the golden mask, Tong Guan's eyeliner has covered the painting studio. Every ink mark on the Chengxintang paper given by the emperor became evidence of guilt.
Three years of painting, three years of running away.
From the Royal Street to the Washi, from the water boat to the execution ground. He witnessed the huge Huashi Gang ship ramming and sinking a civilian ship, and twenty-eight people drowned. The supervisor on the shore toasted as usual. He infiltrated the Chidigang refugee cave, where three thousand people huddled in thatched huts, and the children were sold in exchange for five hundred coins. Couriers from Liangshan crossed the river late at night, Fangla believers met secretly at Chashan, and the bride in the south of the Yangtze River was forced to take the bride as a hostage for free from her husband's money.
And all of this will eventually be drawn into the painting "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" dedicated to the emperor.
"You draw a stroke, and I will release one person." Tong Guan held seventy-three people hostage at the execution ground, and unfolded the blank scroll with a smile, "I want a picture of a prosperous age supported by all people, will you give it to me?"
Zhang Zeduan picked up the bloody pen.
From then on, the water in the Bianhe River was not only water transport, but also blood and ink that was not dry. Every smiling face on Hongqiao hides traces of tears, and every bustling place has bones buried under it. This masterpiece, which will soon be famous throughout the ages, has become an open secret message that has lasted for nine hundred years - until today, an infrared scanner illuminates the mezzanine, revealing a line of blood writing:
"In March of the first year of Jingkang, a list of thirty-eight people from Hongqiao who died for the country. The painter Zhang Zeduan is the last painter."
It turns out that what he painted was never about the prosperous times.
It is the last pattern on the coffin.
