An In-Depth Guide to the Characteristics, Crafting Techniques and Formation of Schools of Guangdong Bonsai

The art of bonsai has accumulated more than 7000 years of history, and it is truly another brilliant pearl in our country's treasure house of art. Let us now talk about the characteristics of Guangdong bonsai; its history is also quite long, dating back 1000 years, and its main style is to concentrate and embody the charm of nature.

Its production materials are all drawn from plants and mountain forest stones, highly restoring the famous mountains and magnificent scenery of the motherland into bonsai, yet its most notable characteristic is that the plants in the bonsai are majestic yet vigorous, simple yet natural.

In these thousand years of history, its evolution and cultural inheritance have also run a long course, though the final formation of its artistic style took place in modern times. In this process of evolution, three main schools formed, and the works created by different schools have different artistic styles.

The artistic characteristic of one school is that it references traditional Chinese painting, which makes its features of majesty and simplicity particularly prominent. Another school mainly embodies the characteristics of being solitary, ethereal and unrestrained, and its choice of materials is also distinctive: it uses tree stumps that are about to die as material, and then through careful cultivation gives them new life, allowing some new buds to sprout. The third school is also distinctive, because it formed in temples, so it mainly embodies the characteristics of being fresh and free from vulgarity and far from the noise of the city.

There is also much attention paid during the production process. First, one must judge the quality of the tree shape, mainly by observing the trunk, roots and tree head to distinguish whether it is a good tree shape or a poor tree shape. For making bonsai, one must certainly choose a good tree shape, for only then does it have ornamental value.

Second, the most crucial thing for potted plants is shaping, because this can express your production intention; you must have a composition in mind, and then according to the different forms of the tree, express its beauty in the most natural way. After that comes selecting the trunk; it is best to choose those trunks that are fully developed, or that have something peculiar about them, and choose different trunks according to your own needs.

After that, the roots must be trimmed. Whether a plant survives depends to a great extent on its roots. If the roots are good, then more nutrients are absorbed, and the plant will also grow well, so special attention must be paid during pruning. Pruning of branches must also be done carefully and cautiously, and the overall beauty must not be affected by issues such as distance and length. Finally comes cultivation; one must grasp the characteristics of various plants and know their sprouting conditions and so on, and in this way the survival rate of the plants will be greatly increased.

There are also quite a few representative works of Guangzhou bonsai, such as orange jasmine (Murraya paniculata), black-bone fragrant (Black Bone Xiang), and Chinese ixora (Ixora chinensis), all of which are classic works. Although they differ in material selection and artistic expression techniques, they all fully display the unique charm of Guangdong bonsai.