Rock painting is the general term including colored drawing, line carving and relief sculpture on the wall of caves, cliffs or isolated rocks. People have used rocks as working tools and articles for everyday use, even since remote antiquity. Meanwhile, rock is the earliest painting material. Ancient people carved and drew on rocks to describe their life, their dream and wish. That is Rock Painting. Various designs and pictures of Rock Painting formed the earliest document of human beings before the invention of character. Involving information of primitive residents' economy, society and life, Rock Painting attracts people by its high artistic value as the production of human mentality.

All over the world, Rock Painting was found in many places. China is the earliest country that found and recorded Rock Painting. Hanfeizi, written in Warring States Period (475-221 BC) of China, records many examples related to Rock Painting. Commentary on the Waterways, written by Li Daoyuan of Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), also has many records on it. Wide in distribution and large in number, China became an important component of world's Rock Painting. According to its area, content and style, Chinese rock painting falls into three schools -- the northeast, the southwest, and the southeast. Most northern Chinese Rock Paintings are found in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province of West China. Their techniques are mainly grinding and carving, in a realistic style. Rock Paintings of southwest school are often found in Yunan Province, mainly representing religious activities and painted in red. As to Rock Paintings found in coastal area of southeast China, most are about sailing and represented in abstract designs by chiseling and carving.

Most Rock Paintings found in ethnic areas of China are works of ethnic artists. It was recorded in ancient documents that in Chinese northern pastures once lived some minorities like Eastern Hu, Hun, Turks, Qidan, Nuzhen, Mongol, and so on. However, there are only relics of Rock Paintings left, scattered among cliffs and wild grass.

Rock Painting is the history record written on cliffs and rocks. Books of most dynasties in China only recorded lives of emperors, seldom mentioned people's daily life. However, what we see in Rock Paintings are: about production like hunting, grazing animals, agriculture, and so on; about religion like worshipping ancestors, sacrificial rites, and so on; and about daily life like villages and dancing. Rock Painting about daily life is of great importance. Human-face Rock Paintings are found everywhere in the world. Those found in China is of large number and various styles, and gain prominent status in world's Human-face Rock Painting. Both in the inland and remote areas numerous artistic works of this type were found. Human-face Rock Paintings shed light on ancient people's religious consciousness. Those peculiar designs represent a mental world that we know little. Rock Paintings in every part of China contain some abstract symbols composed by geometric figures, expressing certain ideas in the abstract way or recording certain events. Among those symbols, some are easy to understand, for instance, the symbol of the sun, the handprint and the footprint. Those Rock Paintings bring us to the remote ancient time and abridge the long time of history.