How Images Write a City: A Comparative Study of the Narrative of Civic Life in Along the River During the Qingming Festival and Allegory of Good Government

Abstract

This paper focuses on the visual representation of civic life inAlong the River During the Qingming Festival and Allegory of Good Government, and explores the different paradigms of Eastern and Western image narration.Along the River During the Qingming Festivalwrites the city as "flowing worldly sentiments"—it lays out the details of urban life through a long scroll with scattered perspective, and later colophons continuously superimpose emotional memories, turning the city into a living world that can be wandered, felt and recollected.Allegory of Good Governmentwrites the city as "allegory of order"—it constructs spatial order through linear perspective, and the allegorical structure integrates civic life into the visual expression of political ideals; later interpretations reconstruct its historical meaning around philosophical contexts. It can be seen that images writing a city is never a simple "record", but a kind of "construction"—selection, reorganization and shaping, ultimately creating an "urban text" for later generations to watch, recollect and reflect on. Through a comparative study, this paper demonstrates the different ways in which visual art "enriches historical understanding" and provides an analytical path based on "image-text interaction" for cross-cultural image research.