Night Revels of Han Xizai in Hangzhou: 2026 Guide

By Joanne Sun | September 2026

The room is full of music, but the host looks as if he would rather be anywhere else.

 

A woman bends over a pipa. A dancer turns. Guests lean closer, servants wait, a Buddhist monk averts his gaze—and at the center of it all sits Han Xizai, wearing a tall black hat and an expression that never quite joins the party.

 

This strange, beautiful night has lasted for almost a thousand years.

From August 22 to September 20, 2026, the Palace Museum’s treasured scroll The Night Revels of Han Xizai (《韩熙载夜宴图》) is on view at the Zhijiang Branch of Zhejiang Provincial Museum. It is the work’s first journey outside Beijing and one of the rare occasions on which this fragile masterpiece has been publicly displayed.

 

For travelers looking for extraordinary things to do in Hangzhou, this is not simply another temporary exhibition. It is a chance to stand in front of one of the most famous ancient Chinese paintings and watch an entire evening unfold—one gesture, instrument and uneasy glance at a time.

The Essential Information

Source: Dianping @心醉依冰

• What: The Night Revels of Han Xizai , Palace Museum collection, Song-dynasty copy
• Dates: August 22–September 20, 2026
• Where: Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Zhijiang Branch, Temporary Exhibition Hall C, second floor
• Exhibition: A Year of Peace: Harmony Under Heaven  (太平年·天下同宁)
• Ticket: From RMB 88 for a standard adult ticket
•  Important: A paid exhibition ticket and a timed reservation through the “云上浙博” mini program are both required
• Nearest metro: Zhijiang Culture Center Station, Hangzhou Metro Line 6
• Time to allow: At least two to three hours for the full exhibition

What Is “The Night Revels of Han Xizai”?

 

The Night Revels of Han Xizai is a handscroll traditionally attributed to Gu Hongzhong, a court painter of the Southern Tang kingdom during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.

 

It depicts a private banquet in the home of Han Xizai (902–970), a senior official, scholar and musician. Across five connected scenes, guests listen to music, watch a dance, rest, gather for another performance and finally drift away at the end of the night.

 

The scroll is painted in color on silk. It measures just 28.7 centimeters high but stretches 335.5 centimeters across—roughly the length of a person lying down twice.

 

The work preserved by the Palace Museum is generally understood to be a Song-dynasty copy of an earlier painting, not an untouched original made during the banquet itself. That distinction matters. Visitors are looking at a masterpiece that carries several layers of time: the world of the tenth-century Southern Tang, the eye of a later copyist and centuries of collecting, inscriptions and interpretation.

Source: Dianping @风吹麦浪里飞出欢乐的歌

It is less like a photograph of one night than a memory of that night, carefully transmitted across generations.

 

Is It a Chinese Ink Painting?

Not in the narrow sense of a monochrome ink wash.

 

International searches often group all traditional Chinese paintings under “Chinese ink painting,” but The Night Revels of Han Xizai is a color-on-silk figure painting. Its precise outlines, saturated mineral colors, patterned textiles and carefully described furniture are very different from the misty landscapes many visitors associate with ink wash.

 

Ink is still fundamental to its drawing, but color does much of the emotional and visual work. Dark official robes ground the composition; pale faces and bright garments pull figures forward; curtains, screens and bedclothes create rooms without enclosing them in rigid walls.

Source: Dianping @wzcaven小苇

 

For anyone curious about Chinese paintings, this scroll is a useful reminder that ancient Chinese art was never one single style. It could be spare or sumptuous, spontaneous or meticulously controlled, monochrome or brilliantly colored.

 

Was This Painting Really an Imperial Spy Report?

The most famous story behind the scroll sounds almost too good to be true.

 

According to an account preserved in the Northern Song catalogue Xuanhe Huapu, the Southern Tang ruler Li Yu heard that Han Xizai was hosting extravagant banquets. Curious—or suspicious—he ordered Gu Hongzhong to enter Han’s residence, observe the festivities and paint what he remembered.

 

In another version, the painting functioned less as secret intelligence than as a warning. Instead of confronting a powerful official directly, the ruler made Han look at an image of his own excess.

 

Either way, the concept is irresistible: one of the world’s great ancient Chinese paintings as political surveillance.

 

But it should not be taken as a simple eyewitness report. Historical sources tell different versions of the commission. Another painter is known to have treated the same subject, and the surviving scroll is a later copy. The “spy story” may preserve historical truth, court gossip, moral storytelling—or all three at once.

 

That uncertainty makes the work more compelling. It asks us not only what happened at the banquet, but who wanted the story told and why.

 

How to Read a Chinese Handscroll

 

A handscroll was not designed to hang permanently on a wall. Traditionally, a viewer unrolled it gradually from right to left, revealing one section while rolling up another.

 

You never saw the whole night at once.

 

That changes the experience. Time enters the painting. A screen appears, a room shifts, Han Xizai returns in a new pose and the evening moves forward. It feels surprisingly cinematic—closer to a long tracking shot or graphic novel than to a framed picture.

 

In The Night Revels of Han Xizai, screens, curtains, furniture and empty space divide the action into five episodes. Han appears in each one, recognizable by his full beard and tall black hat. These are not five versions of him occupying the same room. They show the same man at different moments.

 

When you reach the scroll in the gallery, resist the urge to hunt only for its most famous scene. Follow the rhythm. Notice when the room becomes crowded, when it loosens and when the host seems most alone.

 

The Five Scenes: How a Thousand-Year-Old Party Unfolds

1. Listening to the Pipa

The banquet begins in concentration rather than chaos.

 

A woman plays the pipa, a pear-shaped plucked instrument, while guests cluster around a raised bed platform. The musician is important, but the listeners make the scene breathe. One leans forward. Another turns his head. Hands grow still. You can almost feel a noisy room settling into silence.

Han sits among them, identifiable but not dominant. Already, the host seems present and elsewhere at the same time.

 

2. Watching the Dance

The second scene releases the energy held back in the first.

 

A female performer, traditionally identified as Wang Wushan, dances while Han beats a drum. Sleeves, ribbons and drumsticks create movement across the silk. The room is more animated, yet one figure interrupts its mood: the monk Deming turns partly away from the dancer.

 

Officials, entertainers, attendants and a religious man occupy the same private space. Pleasure and restraint appear side by side.

 

3. Resting Between Performances

Then the party exhales.

 

Han and the performers sit down. People rearrange themselves. Han washes his hands. It is the least spectacular part of the scroll and one of the most convincing.

Real evenings contain pauses. Someone grows tired. Someone waits for the next song. A conversation happens outside the main performance. By painting the lull, the artist makes the celebration feel lived rather than staged.

 

4. Listening to the Wind Ensemble

 

The night has become less formal.

Han sits cross-legged with some of the ceremony removed from his dress while five women perform together on wind instruments. Their repeated forms create an ordered rhythm, calmer than the dance but no less absorbing.

 

Clothing tells time here. The host’s relaxed posture suggests that the gathering has moved deeper into private hours.

 

5. Seeing the Guests Off

 

There is no grand finale.

 

Guests begin to leave. Small groups form. Private gestures pass between figures. Han still holds a drumstick, as if a piece of the performance lingers after the music has stopped.

 

The crowd loosens and the night dissolves.

 

That understated ending is one reason the painting feels so modern. The artist understood that a memorable party does not conclude cleanly. It fades into tiredness, reluctance and things left unsaid.

 

Why Does Han Xizai Look So Unhappy?

 

Han listens, drums, rests and receives guests, yet his face remains restrained. His gaze often seems distant. Even at the center of the gathering, he does not fully belong to its pleasure.

 

Some interpretations connect this melancholy to politics. Han had lived through instability and the weakening of the Southern Tang. Later stories suggest he cultivated a reputation for extravagance to avoid dangerous responsibility at court—or because he had become disillusioned with public life.

No single explanation can be proven from his expression. But the contrast is unmistakable: everyone around him is performing an enjoyable night, while Han appears to be performing the role of its host.

 

This is a powerful way into Chinese figure painting. Emotion is not always announced by an exaggerated face. It can live in a lowered gaze, the angle of a shoulder or the empty space separating one person from another.

 

A Banquet With Almost No Food

For a painting called “The Night Revels”, the scroll spends remarkably little time showing elaborate dishes.

 

Instead, it records the social architecture of a banquet: who sits where, who performs, who watches, how clothing relaxes as the night continues and how people behave when it is time to leave. Cups, vessels and serving objects appear, but food is not the star.

 

That absence tells us something useful. A meal is never only a menu. It organizes status, hospitality, intimacy and attention.

 

This is also where the painting creates a natural bridge to Hangzhou beyond the museum. Han Xizai’s banquet represents display, entertainment and elite social life. Hangzhou’s Buddhist-influenced vegetarian traditions offer almost the opposite mood: quieter, more restrained and attentive to balance. Both use the meal to express values.

Source: Bridge to Locals

Bridge to Locals’ Chinese Philosophy of Diet: Zen Food Tour continues that conversation at Xiangji Temple and along the Grand Canal, using food, tea, calligraphy and traditional wellness practices to explore how eating can connect with health and spirituality.

 

[Continue from the painted banquet into Hangzhou’s living food culture →]

 

Look Beyond the People: The Scroll Is a Time Capsule

The human drama attracts attention first, but the objects surrounding it are just as revealing.

 

Look for folding screens, bed platforms, low tables, chairs, lamps and patterned textiles. Musical instruments include the pipa, drums, clappers, flutes and the bili, a double-reed instrument. Clothing and hairstyles help art historians think about fashion and status.

 

Because the surviving work is a Song copy of an earlier composition, its material world may layer together more than one period. It should not be read like an archaeological photograph of a single tenth-century room.

 

That is exactly what makes ancient Chinese paintings so valuable and so tricky. They preserve information, but they also edit, inherit and reinterpret it. Every object is both evidence and artistic choice.

 

Practical Guide for International Visitors

Exhibition Dates and Location

Special display: “The Night Revels of Han Xizai”

  Dates:   August 22–September 20, 2026 

  Museum:   Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Zhijiang Branch (浙江省博物馆之江馆区) 

  Gallery:   Second floor, Temporary Exhibition Hall C 

  Chinese exhibition title:   太平年·天下同宁

Source: Dianping @wzcaven小苇

 

The larger exhibition runs from July 28, 2026 to June 20, 2027, but The Night Revels of Han Xizai leaves after September 20.

 

How to Get There

Take Hangzhou Metro Line 6 to Zhijiang Culture Center Station (之江文化中心站). Follow signs for Zhejiang Provincial Museum within the culture-center complex.

 

Do not confuse the Zhijiang Branch with Zhejiang Provincial Museum’s older Gushan Branch beside West Lake. The painting is at Zhijiang.

 

Ticket Prices for the Main Exhibition

• Standard adult: RMB 88
• Concession: RMB 45
• One adult and one child: RMB 108
• Two adults and one child: RMB 168
  

ource: Dianping @老陶是猪头

 

Tickets have been offered through Ctrip and Douyin. Search the Chinese title太平年·天下同宁. Check the official Zhejiang Provincial Museum WeChat account for any added sales channels or changes.

 

A Ticket Alone Is Not Enough

During the special display, visitors need both:

 

1. a valid paid ticket for A Year of Peace: Harmony Under Heaven; and

2. a timed reservation for the special exhibition through the “云上浙博” mini program.

Source: Dianping @wzcaven小苇

 

The reservation page generates a live dynamic QR code. Screenshots and offline copies are not accepted. Keep your phone connected and refresh the code before verification. Arrive within the reserved time slot; late entry is not guaranteed.

 

Advice for Passport Holders

Chinese ticketing and mini-program interfaces do not always handle overseas identity documents or international payment cards consistently. Before paying, confirm that the booking path accepts your passport details. If it does not, ask your hotel or a trusted local contact for help, or call the Zhijiang Branch information desk at +86 571 8539 1628.

 

Do not buy from an unofficial reseller who cannot also explain how the required timed reservation will be made.

Source: Dianping @tony025

 

Opening Hours

The museum’s standard hours are:

- Tuesday–Sunday: 9:00–17:00

- Last admission: 16:30

- Closed Monday, except national public holidays

 

Seasonal extensions and special-date arrangements can occur. Your reservation slot and the museum’s latest notice should take priority over general hours.

 

Photography Rules

 

The museum’s special-display notice prohibits cameras and video-recording equipment. Flash, tripods, selfie sticks and external lighting are also prohibited, as are unauthorized livestreams and commercial photography.

 

Follow staff instructions regarding mobile-phone use. Even if a phone image is permitted in part of the exhibition, the best response to a fragile silk painting is not to fight for a photograph. Look closely while the original is in front of you; high-quality reproductions can be viewed later.

How to See the Scroll Without Rushing

 

The painting will attract concentrated interest, and time near it may be managed. A little preparation makes the encounter much better.

Source: Dianping @wzcaven小苇

Before arriving, remember only three things:

 

- Han is the bearded man in the tall black hat.

- The story moves through five scenes from right to left.

- Watch his expression while everyone else performs pleasure.

 

Once inside, do not try to decode every instrument and historical identity at once. First follow the emotional temperature: attention, excitement, pause, relaxation, departure.

 

Then go back mentally and notice the objects.

 

The best way to read the scroll is not to prove how much you know. It is to let a distant evening become recognizable.

 

See the Painted Night—Then Taste a Living Tradition

 

Museums let us get close to the past, but glass still stands between us and the object.

 

Outside the gallery, culture becomes physical again: temple incense, the texture of calligraphy paper, the bitterness of a herbal drink, the rhythm of dishes arriving at a shared table.

 

Bridge to Locals’ Chinese Philosophy of Diet: Zen Food Tour is not a recreation of Han Xizai’s extravagant night. It is a counterpoint. Over 2.5 hours, travelers visit Xiangji Temple, share a vegetarian meal, walk through the historic Grand Canal area and explore connections among Buddhist thought, food, calligraphy and traditional ideas of wellness.

 

The painting shows a banquet used to perform status and conceal emotion. The experience asks what a meal can reveal when people slow down enough to talk.

Source: Bridge to Locals

 

See the night preserved on silk. Then step into the Hangzhou that is still eating, thinking and changing beyond the museum walls.

 

[Explore the Chinese Philosophy of Diet in Hangzhou →]

 

Frequently Asked Questions

1.     Where can I see The Night Revels of Han Xizai in 2026?

From August 22 to September 20, 2026, it is displayed in Temporary Exhibition Hall C on the second floor of Zhejiang Provincial Museum’s Zhijiang Branch in Hangzhou. It is part of the exhibition A Year of Peace: Harmony Under Heaven (太平年·天下同宁).

 

2.     Is the painting in Hangzhou the original?

It is the famous Palace Museum scroll traditionally attributed to Gu Hongzhong and generally identified as a Song-dynasty copy of an earlier work. Although it is a copy in the historical sense, it is itself an extremely old, fragile and highly important masterpiece.

 

3. Is The Night Revels of Han Xizai a Chinese ink painting?

It is more precisely described as a color-on-silk figure handscroll. Ink outlines are essential, but the work uses rich color and detailed pattern rather than the predominantly monochrome style many people associate with Chinese ink painting.

 

4.     Do I need to reserve the special exhibition?

Yes. A paid ticket and a separate timed reservation through the “云上浙博” mini program are both required during the scroll’s special display. The live reservation QR code must be shown; a screenshot is not valid.

 

5.     Can international visitors book with a passport?

Support for overseas documents may vary between the ticket platform and mini program. Confirm passport acceptance before payment and contact the museum at +86 571 8539 1628 if the interface does not provide a suitable document option.

 

6.     How long should I spend at Zhejiang Provincial Museum?

Allow at least two to three hours for the special and main exhibition. Art and history enthusiasts could easily spend half a day at the Zhijiang Branch.

 

7.     What else should I see near the museum?

The Zhijiang Culture Center also brings together major provincial cultural institutions. Depending on current opening arrangements, visitors can combine the museum with the Zhejiang Library, Zhejiang Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum or other venues in the complex. For a broader day, continue to West Lake, the Grand Canal or Hangzhou’s Buddhist temples.

 

Sources and Further Reading

- [Palace Museum: The Night Revels of Han Xizai ](https://minghuaji.dpm.org.cn/paint/detail?id=ebfcda63da386f527526ef7d780ce30f)

- [Zhejiang Provincial Museum: official opening hours and contact information](https://www.zjmuseum.com.cn/cn/)

- [Hangzhou CPPCC: exhibition dates, phases and ticket prices](https://www.hzzx.gov.cn/cshz/content/2026-07/28/content_9266215.htm)

- [Xinhua: overview of  A Year of Peace: Harmony Under Heaven ](https://www.news.cn/20260728/d0d6a2d60a7f4108abf02268593aef6a/c.html)

- [Special-display reservation and visitor rules](https://www.66wz.com/wendu/system/2026/08/18/105824132.shtml)