Boats were very useful due to many characteristics for most people.
Explanation:
As said in the question, Morning Boat Jam is a Chinese ink painting that shows how boatmen fought to find their way though a watergate in Suchou, China.
The painting shows that many Chinese citizens used this way of transportation to go to their jobs or for transportation to to from one place to another; due to the amount of people, it is possible to infer that it was not excessively expensive or that it was affordable for most of the people, specially because they could carry big amounts of goods and use boats for long distances. The water was important because of that and because Chinese people used to get food from it, too.
