linguistic:paraphrasing, structural:expansion
Analysis and questions

Scholars have studied the painting carefully in the second half of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century but do not agree on many basic points. Scholars question the accuracy of the translation of the painting's name, since the word Qingming may refer to either "peace and order" or to the Qingming Festival. Other translations have been suggested:

During the late 1960s, the Taipei Palace Museum released a series of books (later digitized as CD-ROM), videos, and stamps about the scroll that translated it loosely as A City of Cathay.

Some scholars now question three things that had long been accepted about the Song dynasty original: that the city depicted is Kaifeng; that it was painted before the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127, and that it depicts the Qingming Festival. Some suggest that the city is an idealized city of the mind; that it was painted after the fall of the dynasty in 1127; and that it depicts a scene in early autumn. However, other scholars view that the city is indeed Kaifeng, but that the painting depicts a day in the Qingming solar term of the Chinese calendar, not the Qingming Festival.

An allegorical interpretation proposed that the painting was a subtle entreaty to the emperor that he recognize dangerous currents beneath the surface of prosperity. Kaifeng depended on grain from the far south, but the painting showed only a lowly official on duty at the docks, only a few guards stationed at the city gate and the docks, who did not appear to be alert. The term "Qingming" did not refer to either the holiday or the calendar but was taken from the phrase 清明之世 ("A bright and enlightened era") from the Book of the Later Han, and used ironically.

The wooden bridge depicted in the original version was reconstructed by a team of engineers and documented by the PBS television show NOVA during their Secrets of Lost Empires series.