What's on

Countryside vibes

Lu Qinglong's oil landscapes might remind one of works of the Barbizon school, a 19th-century art movement in which painters were drawn to the French village and devoted themselves to portraying the countryside scenery, farmworkers and scenes of daily life. Like Barbizon paintings, Lu presents tonal qualities and serenity as he depicts stacks of hay, vegetable fields, bare trees and riverbanks. With strokes of softness and calmness, he is able to deliver a feeling of homesickness and nostalgia in his works. Lu's canvas of rural scenery is now on show at the National Art Museum of China through to Nov 25.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-1476.

Miniature landscapes

Chen Jian, a leading figure in watercolor, has been reinventing his style for years. His ongoing exhibition at the National Art Museum of China shows dozens of artworks of sizes that measure no more than 50 centimeters. Chen is known for his figure paintings that are exuberant with vibrancy and animation. His landscapes on show portray scenery in a semiabstract way, with soft tones. The exhibition ends on Nov 25.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-1476.

Harmony and unity

A gilded silver plate was cast in the Eastern Roman Empire about 1,500 years ago, and centuries later it was excavated in Jingyuan county, Gansu province. It had lost much of its gilded surface, while the relief motifs of grapes and deities of ancient Greece are still vivid. The details of how this plate ended up in a county along the Yellow River are still mysterious to historians, but the techniques and decorations are enough to reveal its mission once as an envoy to connect trade and cultural exchanges between the East and the West, via the ancient Silk Road. The plate is now on show at the Harmony and Unity in China exhibition at the Liaoning Provincial Museum, through to Jan 8. Showing artifacts of different kinds and drawn from several museum collections across the country, the exhibition gives a vivid illustration of realizing harmony and coexistence.

9 am-4 pm, closed on Mondays. 157 Zhihui Third Street, Hunnan district, Shenyang, Liaoning province. 024-2320-5102.

Ode to land

The soil has been an essential theme of portrayal for Chinese painters, who thrived in a civilization that was dependent on agricultural development for a long time. Cultivation on the Earth, an exhibition now on at the Taoxichuan Art Museum, in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, reviews this intimate relationship between the land and people, and how Chinese civilization has been shaped by it throughout centuries. On show are dozens of prints in the collection of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The exhibition runs through Dec 29.

3-10 pm, closed on Mondays. Building B9, Ceramic Art Avenue, 150 Xichang West Road, Zhushan district, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province.