The Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799; r. 1736–1795) completed six inspection tours through southern China during his reign. In 1751, he commissioned Xu Yang, a painter from Suzhou, to paint a pictorial record of his southern inspection tours. Twelve handscrolls were painted over six years (1764–1770) of these imperial inspection tours. The scroll seen here is the second in the series. It depicts the royal procession after leaving Beijing and travelling along the Grand Canal towards Dezhou, which is located in northwest Shandong province in present-day China.

The Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour handscrolls were the second set created during the Qing period. The first set also included twelve handscrolls and was commissioned by his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor, around 1698 to commemorate his own southern inspection tours. The handscrolls in each set vary in length from over ten meters to over twenty meters long. Among the 24 original southern inspection tour handscrolls, some have been lost, while several of the known scrolls are located in the Palace Museum and the National Museum in Beijing, China, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, United States, and the Guimet Museum in Paris, France. The Mactaggart Art Collection contains two scrolls from this original set of 24 - one is the Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour Scroll Seven: Wuxi to Suzhou; the other is the one you see here, the Qianlong Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour Scroll Two: Crossing the Grand Canal at Dezhou.