High Gorges and Flat Lake, a landscape painting by Shi Jiangcheng and Zhang Jun, is a highlight of the exhibition Clear Waters Flow Eastward at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

Source of the Great River, a woodblock by Xu Kuang.

Photos showing Shanghai and Chongqing taken by the late French photographer Bruno Barbey in 1980.

People on a River Island, a photograph by Zhang Kechun.

In 1973, Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010) and several other artists embarked on a months-long journey along the Yangtze River, starting from estuarine Shanghai and heading westward to Chongqing, a major city upstream.

The small group observed and sketched all the way in preparation for a wall painting commission that Wu later described as "an appealing assignment". Recalling the moment they reached mountainous Wanxian county, now Wanzhou district of Chongqing, Wu wrote that he was struck by "a lively scene of bustling riverside docks, busy boats and crowds of people".

Decades later, artist Zhang Wenchao undertook his own journey along the Yangtze, from Yichang in Hubei province to Chongqing. He traveled alone, armed with a camera, rather than a sketchbook.

He later transformed his observations into a 10-minute video work, Wading Across the River, portraying what he calls "a realm where the river connects different times and spaces, leaving traces of the origin of Chinese civilization".

He says the work seeks to inspire new perspectives on history, community and cultural identity.

Today, Zhang's video work is presented alongside Wu's vivid oil landscapes inspired by the latter's multiple journeys along the Yangtze. Wu was nurtured by the river, having grown up in Yixing, Jiangsu province, within the Yangtze River Delta.

Their works now meet in the exhibition Clear Waters Flow Eastward, on view until Thursday at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, forming a painterly odyssey of China's longest river.

According to curator Wei Xiangqi, nearly half of the artworks in the exhibition have rarely been displayed in recent years. The exhibition weaves together artistic interpretations and historical narratives, presenting the Yangtze not merely as a geographical presence but as a living cultural continuum shaped by memory, labor and imagination.

He says while the Yangtze nurtured brilliant early-stage civilizations, such as the Lingjiatan, Sanxingdui and Liangzhu cultures, "its magnificent scenery of both the mainstream and tributaries has provided an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists of all time".

The exhibition rolls out like a Chinese handscroll of mountains and waters. It provides the audience with the experiences of woyou ("lie down and travel") and yibu huanjing ("move to gain different perspectives and appreciate varied scenery") prompted by the ancient Chinese and enhanced by the famous poetic verses on walls.

Visitors are guided through diverse views of the Yangtze's course: its source emerging from the glacial meltwater in the Tangula Mountains of Qinghai province, the docks and mountains of Chongqing covered in thick fog, and blooming plum trees that infuse Taihu Lake in Jiangsu with vitality.

Wei says since the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), "the Yangtze River of Ten Thousand Miles" has become an established landscape format, rendered by painters as a long horizontal scroll depicting one or several river sections. "Great artists, such as Xia Gui of the Southern Song, Wang Meng from the 14th century and Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), adopted the style to capture the majesty of the emerald waters surging forward and the towering mountains on riverbanks."

In the 1950s, Li Xiongcai (1910-2001), a second-generation leader of the Lingnan School that flourished in Guangdong province, expanded the tradition to express human courage in confronting nature. His monumental work, A Picture of Flood Prevention Works in Wuhan, is partially unveiled in the exhibition.

Measuring 28 meters in length, with 18 meters on display, the painting documents efforts to combat catastrophic flooding that struck Wuhan in Hubei in 1954. At the time, Li was teaching at an art school in the city.

Time and again, the Yangtze has borne witness to humanity's resolve, ingenuity and collective strength. The exhibition guides viewers through painterly tributes to major engineering projects that have left indelible marks on the river's epic narrative, including the bridges across the river in Wuhan and Nanjing in Jiangsu, as well as the Gezhouba and Three Gorges dams.

The exhibition concludes with a section where Zhang Wenchao's video work is shown alongside photographs taken by French photographer Bruno Barbey (1941-2020) during his visits to China in 1973 and 1980. Through Barbey's lens, viewers glimpse shifting lifestyles and mentalities shaped by urbanization.

Across media, eras and perspectives, these works celebrate, as all these scholars, poets and artists in history did, the Yangtze as a wonder of nature, a cultural tapestry and a national epic.

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn