linguistic:translation, stylistic:tone
Copies

The original painting was a pride of the imperial collections for centuries. It was frequently copied by later artists of successive periods and it became familiarized among the nobles, scholar officials, urban residents and merchants. Many scholars thought of the Song original as the "masterpiece", and gave little respect to later versions, which they called mere copies, forgeries, reproductions, reinterpretations or elaborations, more than a hundred of which are now in museums in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, North America, and France. The significance and value of these "copies", however, has recently been recognized.

An early copy, generally considered to be faithful to the original, was made by Zhao Mengfu during the Yuan dynasty.

The Ming dynasty (14th to 17th centuries) painter Qiu Ying is credited with several copies, which have considerable differences from the original. One version came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1947. Another has a length of 6.7 meters, longer than the original. It also replaced the scenery from the Song dynasty to that of the Ming dynasty based on contemporary fashions and customs, updating the costumes worn by the characters and the styles of vehicles (boats and carts). The Song wooden bridge is replaced with a stone bridge in the Ming remake. The arc of the stone bridge is much taller than that of the wooden original, and where the original had a boat about to crash into the bridge, the reinterpretation has a boat being methodically guided under the bridge by ropes, pulled by men ashore, several other large boats dutifully waiting their turn, undisturbed. Another 12 meter long copy from the late Ming period is kept in the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna in Austria.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, dozens of copies were made by little-known professional painters in Suzhou, usually carrying the (forged) signature of either Zhang Zeduan or Qiu Ying. The scholar Chang Su-chen argues that these paintings should not be dismissed as mere "copies." These painters, she says, created “distinctive paintings that visualized pre-modern viewers’ various conceptions of a “great age,” an ideal society from the traditional Chinese perspective.”

Quite different was the painting, known as the "Qing Court Version", commissioned by the Yongzheng Emperor, which was completed only after his death by five court painters (Chen Mu, Sun Hu, Jin Kun, Dai Hong and Cheng Zhidao). These five artists worked from a draft scroll in ink, also shown below, by Shen Yuan, another court painter, who apparently worked under the emperor's personal supervision. It was presented to the Qianlong Emperor on January 15, 1737. This is distinguished by its innovative modern style, high degree of detail, and intact preservation. This version, shown below, was later moved, along with major portions of the imperial collection, to the National Palace Museum in Taipei in 1949. There are many more people, over 4,000, in this remake, which also is much larger (at 11 metres by 35 cm, or 37 ft by 1 ft). The leftmost third of this version, which does not appear in the Song version, is within the palace, with buildings and people appearing refined and elegant. Most people within the castle are women, with some well-dressed officials.