The extraordinarily detailed scroll named Peace Reigns over the River was created to exemplify typical commercial activity in a city during the Northern Song. This period of time was popular for its significant commerce revolution. Restaurants and food stands made its entrance into the commercial life and flourished, as well as vendors on the side of the street, creating a typical ‘marketplace’ for this area. Many of those various types of merchant and consumer interactions are illustrated in the scroll, describing the different organizational and social characteristics needed to produce such a busy, yet productive market. Zhang Zeduan, the artist behind the scroll, drew very detailed interactions between vendors and consumers. One of those
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The bridge provides an apparent “ease of access” for consumers to get from one side of the river to the other, where the marketplace is located at. The sides of the bridge and the borders of the streets are lined with merchants selling various types of goods. On the bottom right of the image, it shows what appears to be restaurants filling up the rest of the inner part of the streets. Generally, what you can depict from the image is that goods are sold on stands or laid out on the ground lining the sides, while different restaurants are concentrated in one area as opposed to being stretched out. This organization allows for consumers to be able to find whatever they need by easily walking up and down the road.
Other things you can identify in the image is the use of animals. The increase of customers during the commercial revolution inevitably introduced an increased demand of goods. And with the need for more goods, merchants needed a more efficient way to bring those items to the location. Not only were horses and donkeys utilized to transport a heavier amounts of goods, it was also used to allow merchants to be mobile, both seen in the picture. Overall, the use of animals provided for enhanced mobility between merchant and
The bridge provides an apparent “ease of access” for consumers to get from one side of the river to the other, where the marketplace is located at. The sides of the bridge and the borders of the streets are lined with merchants selling various types of goods. On the bottom right of the image, it shows what appears to be restaurants filling up the rest of the inner part of the streets. Generally, what you can depict from the image is that goods are sold on stands or laid out on the ground lining the sides, while different restaurants are concentrated in one area as opposed to being stretched out. This organization allows for consumers to be able to find whatever they need by easily walking up and down the road.
Other things you can identify in the image is the use of animals. The increase of customers during the commercial revolution inevitably introduced an increased demand of goods. And with the need for more goods, merchants needed a more efficient way to bring those items to the location. Not only were horses and donkeys utilized to transport a heavier amounts of goods, it was also used to allow merchants to be mobile, both seen in the picture. Overall, the use of animals provided for enhanced mobility between merchant and