Annotation: "The man with the shaved head looks like a monk and the man with the cap looks a bit like..." (Annotation)

Annotation: "The man with the shaved head looks like a monk and the man with the cap looks a bit like..."

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The man with the shaved head looks like a monk and the man with the cap looks a bit like a scholar official. This links to the examiniation systems we've been talking about which would have just been coming in during the Song when the Qingming scroll was painted. Here, Zhang Zeduan seems to have painted the scholar official / literatus just as if he were part of everyday life and the explicit hierarchy we think about it not very evident. I.e. people are not crowding around him or focusing their attention on his presence. He seems more akin to a modern-day professor walking through town than a very high-class nobleman.

Does the depiction of a scholar with a monk hint at a relationship between governance and neo-Confucianism or Buddhist values during the Song dynasty?