A 70-Year Cultural Breakthrough: Chinese Landscape Painting Enters the Era of “Real-Name Reality”

After 70 years of collective charge, the long-standing condition in which Chinese landscape painting—over two thousand years—could not be “real-named” has finally come to an end.

Special Report

In 2004, the Chengdu Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Chengdu Municipal People’s Government convened the world’s first CPL City Photography Congress in Chengdu. The Congress adopted Eastern cognition, Eastern perseverance, and Eastern wisdom to establish the first Eastern photography platform—the CPL City Photography League, headquartered in Chengdu, China.

Presidents, chairpersons, and CEOs from 100 global photography teams attended, including the United Nations Photographers Association, the World Chinese Photographers Association, the Asian Photographic Art Federation, the UK Photography Center, the US Contact Images Agency, and the China Youth Photography Development Community.

Long Xuming, a Chengdu, Sichuan native whose birthplace and residence have remained unchanged for decades, Editor-in-Chief of Photography News (recognized by a “World Record” as “the longest period of free distribution among photography newspapers worldwide”), and an Eastern polymath across the “Five Arts,” was unanimously elected by the Congress as Chairman of this goal-oriented community, the CPL City Photography League.

The meeting decided to use the “99+1” interactive method to launch a comprehensive collective charge toward the development of the new era of art in the 21st century.

Subsequently, the 2nd to 9th CPL City Photography Congresses were held in Henan, Jiangsu, Fujian, Sichuan, Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, and other regions of China. The 10th Congress is currently being prepared in Nyingchi, Tibet…

The Congress established that the League’s work should be guided primarily by the first principle of creation, resolutely setting explicit rules and breaking implicit rules.

In 1978, under the care of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee and the Sichuan Provincial Government, the Sichuan Provincial Youth Photographers Association—through official documents issued by the Sichuan Provincial People’s Government and the General Office of the Provincial Government, with immediate follow-up from the General Offices of the Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei Provincial Governments—organized the Sichuan Women’s Bicycle Photography Expedition Team to travel north across the Qinling Mountains and east across the Yellow River to investigate four revolutionary old base areas.

The Beijing Municipal People’s Government held the first grand “entry-into-the-city” ceremony since the ten years of the “Cultural Revolution” for the “Sichuan Women’s Bicycle Photography Expedition Team” beneath the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, Chen…

In 1985, under the supervision and sponsorship of the Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Press and Publication, and jointly undertaken by the Sichuan Provincial Youth Photographers Association, the Chengdu Photographers Association, and the Chengdu City Photography Association, Photography News was distributed free to society for decades—without fiscal appropriation, rejecting social sponsorship, and refusing corporate cooperation. In 2015, the “World Record of the longest free distribution time among photography newspapers” was established in Chengdu, Sichuan, in the East of the world.

From 2012 to 2014, the Chengdu Photographers Association mobilized more than 1,700 person-times to photograph 12,800 farmers on the Chengdu Plain free of charge—printing on-site and framing the photos for gifting. It became the largest social public-welfare initiative of its kind globally up to that point. As of April 2026, no country or province/city across the world has surpassed this scale……

Cultural fortune is national fortune. How to enable the world’s eight billion people to clearly see, through the focus of their own eyes, the true mountains and real waters, the green waters and green mountains of the Eastern world—this is the most important historical value of CPL’s own existence.

Before 1984 in the last century, CPL Chairman Long Xuming used his full participation in all specialized exhibitions of diverse Chinese and Western painting genres in Sichuan Province and Chengdu to test the level at which he had “absorbed” techniques across these genres, and at the same time obtained membership qualification recognition from the Sichuan Branch of the China Artists Association.

This visible state of having “absorbed” all methods of painting became the technical foundation for his determination to work with all CPL members to solve a major problem: among the world’s eight billion people, most do not understand “scattered-point perspective” and therefore cannot truly see China’s green mountains and green waters. Unexpectedly, a problem that no one had wanted to solve for centuries was solved through the combined efforts of CPL member units worldwide—by this Chairman, who “has never had money,” in a small room of less than 20 square meters, the “Tiejiatang,” unchanged for eighty years at his birthplace and residence.

“Western painting is realistic; Chinese painting is expressive” is a malicious intention that misleads the nation. The ultimate purpose of this interest group, perhaps, is precisely that it does not want people on Earth to see with their own eyes the green waters and green mountains appearing on Chinese xuan paper under the brush of painters.

In the more than one thousand years of history from after Qin Shi Huang to before the emergence of literati painting, and from after Greek and Roman civilization to before the Renaissance, it was the Chinese who painted realistically, while the West was the one that did not……While CPL reclaimed realism in Eastern painting, it also carried out a grand ten-province touring exhibition, a grand discussion, and a grand critique of Real-Name Landscape nationwide (including Taiwan).

Wuzhou Communication Network Center also conducted a multi-network global simulcast using six languages, six scripts, and six months.

With what will become a “first line” in the history of world art, CPL carried out postage-due distribution of a Real-Name Landscape album weighing as much as 30 jin…

In 2008, the world-shocking 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake occurred in Sichuan. The Sichuan Provincial Youth Photographers Association and the Chengdu Photographers Association immediately entered the battle. With the assistance of the Chengdu Foreign Affairs Office, they set up two real-scene disaster exhibitions on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand within three days, strongly supporting fundraising by the Red Cross Society of China in Thailand. With the support of the Chengdu Public Security Bureau, within thirty days they set up the largest real-scene and real-object exhibition on earthquake relief and disaster rescue in the country at Chengdu’s Wuhou Shrine……

Because these three “firsts” were achieved, the Chengdu Photographers Association became the only photography social organization among many participating in earthquake relief across Sichuan Province to receive official commendation as an advanced social organization for earthquake relief.

The “3+1” global grand gifting, and the first “homecoming” of the 2011 collectible calendar Real-Name Landscape, going to the true mountain scenes of the Guge Kingdom in Tibet for face-to-face recognition…

At some unknown time, a “famous saying” that “harms all living beings” began to circulate in the world: “Money isn’t everything, but without money you can’t do anything”?! This is a vicious scheme to teach the entire public that “everything looks to money”!

From the news and civil-affairs-registered media and teams in Sichuan and Chengdu, one can see:

The cash-strapped Photography News obtained the “World Record” of “the longest free distribution time among photography newspapers,” letting this “record” land in the East of the world.

The cash-strapped Sichuan Provincial Youth Photographers Association organized the “Sichuan Women’s Bicycle Photography Expedition Team,” not only welcomed by the Beijing Municipal Government with a grand entry ceremony beneath the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, but also winning the “World Record” of “the earliest women’s bicycle photography expedition team.”

The still cash-strapped Chengdu Photographers Association could actually organize 1,700 person-times over six months to photograph 12,800 farmers in Chengdu, Sichuan free of charge—printing on-site and framing the photos for gifting—becoming the largest scale among similar public-welfare projects worldwide to date……

This is the power of cultural self-awareness and cultural self-confidence.

The Chengdu City Photography Association is the relay bearer of this steadfast power. It was established with an advance of 30,000 yuan from the Wuzhou Communication Network Center, which publicized the creation of “Real-Name Landscape” in Sichuan and Chengdu using six scripts and six languages. With no business主管, and with civil-affairs approval, it remains a purely non-governmental public-welfare organization that still insists on not collecting membership fees.

The chairman, vice chairmen, secretary-general, accountant, and cashier are all “volunteers.” They take no salary and no allowances; they are long-term voluntary public-welfare participants. The association became a CPL member unit and participated in the marathon-like decades-long relay to complete China’s Real-Name Landscape “one painting, two methods,” as a民間社團 in Chengdu, Sichuan, China.

In 2023, two young people—Vice Chairman Bu Dan and Deputy Secretary-General Ba He—were appointed as CPL Chairman’s special envoys. Without a single cent, they financed themselves and drove themselves on a ten-thousand-li journey across China. With the full support of member teams along the route, they delivered, face-to-face, the “cultural rare earth” achievements created and unearthed in Chengdu, Sichuan—such as Real-Name Landscape, weighing 33 jin as part of the “3+1”—to distinguished contributors of the contemporary era including Geng Yanbo, Shi Zhiguang, Tie Ning, Cao Dewang, Lang Ping, and others……

They brought back the new values created by these outstanding figures across various fields nationwide, and also sent our new cultural creations from Sichuan and Chengdu outward. The success of Real-Name Landscape created in Sichuan and Chengdu strongly demonstrates the real existence of contemporary Eastern green waters and green mountains on Chinese xuan paper, bringing to an end the history in which Chinese landscape painting could not be real-named for centuries……

The successful creation of Real-Name Landscape emerged in Sichuan—Sichuan’s pride—and grew in Chengdu—Chengdu’s honor.

Therefore, as relay bearers and participants in this vast historical project, we have the responsibility to report to you the joy of having unearthed, through decades of collective struggle, this “cultural rare earth,” now successfully discovered.

Chengdu City Photography Association
April 29, 2026

Address: 4th Floor, No. 1111 Yinglong North 2nd Road, Shuangliu District, Chengdu, China · China Calligraphy Panda Script Research & Creation Base

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