Introduction to Sichuan-style bonsai: one of the Chinese bonsai schools

Sichuan was called Ba-Shu in ancient times. In the first year of the Zhenguan era of the Tang Dynasty (627 AD), the Jiannan Circuit was established, so in the past Sichuan-style bonsai was also called “Jiannan bonsai”. After Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the provincial seat was moved to Yizhou, which is present-day Chengdu, and its jurisdiction covered not only Sichuan but also parts of Yunnan and Guizhou.

The distinctive mountains and rivers of Ba-Shu, through a long historical process, gave birth to the distinctive Ba-Shu culture. According to the Records of the Kings of Shu and the Chronicles of Huayang: “From Kaiming up to Cancong, thirty-four thousand years accumulated,” and “The state of Shu began with the Renhuang.” If these records lean toward legend, then the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan is enough to prove the long history of Ba-Shu culture. As early as the period equivalent to the late Neolithic Age to the early Western Zhou (about 4500 to 2900 years ago), the bronze objects cast in Sichuan, such as bronze human figures, had never been seen at other sites, and their physical features and clothing differed from those of the Huaxia people; the forms of other objects were also mostly unseen in the Central Plains region. Although some objects resemble those of the Central Plains, in terms of overall characteristics they are not the same as the culture of the Central Plains or other regions, possessing a striking local character and having initially formed an independent cultural system.

The development of Sichuan-style bonsai art went through a process in modeling from simple to complex, and then from complex to simple; the first “simple” meant plain, and the latter “simple” means concise. Like other bonsai schools, based on the modeling principle of “tree form close to painting,” the natural style came first, and later, by imitating the posture and variations of old trees, technical rules for expressing such posture and variation were continually summarized. Through the creation and refinement of bonsai artists over successive generations, these were finally reduced to 10 body styles and 3 forms and 5 types. Bonsai master Chen Sifu wrote in his monograph The Art of Training and Binding Bonsai Trunks: “If we consider the regular-style flat-branch form of trunk, the modeling in Chengdu and western Sichuan with curved main trunks and downward-slanting branch tips imitates the low, aged state of pines and cypresses in the high, cold regions of Mount Emei that have long been pressed down by accumulated snow; after the snow melts, the treetops stand upright, and the branches turn from drooping to extended or slightly slanting. Therefore, in the regular-type flat-branch form of trunk, the branch pads gradually slope downward and flatten toward the pad ends, or the base of the branch pad slants downward and the pad slopes slightly downward and flattens.” This shows that the regular style comes from life. But it is also higher than life; it is an artistic generalization and artistic processing of nature, and furthermore, like the “metricalization” of classical poetry, it serves to concentrate and display the basic principles of traditional aesthetics: the beauty of symmetry, the beauty of balance, the beauty of rhythm, seeking change within unity and unity within change, lively yet orderly, solemn yet nimble. “It breaks free from the blind control of natural phenomena over bonsai art, governing its objects of reflection with sober reason and abundant emotion. On the one hand it reproduces nature; on the other hand it actively expresses humanity's aesthetic ideals about nature. In artistic form, it takes rigorous meter as its basic structural principle; it is the ‘regulated verse’ among bonsai.” (Tang Chunlai: "Exploration of the Beauty of Regular-Type Tree Trunk Bonsai," in Studies on Chengdu Bonsai).

Precisely because the regular style has very high aesthetic value, the natural style gradually “faded” along with it, retaining only a very few cliff styles; the well-preserved “old-age” tree trunk bonsai that survive today are the most convincing testimony. In the late Qing Dynasty, on the fifteenth day of the second lunar month each year, a flower fair was held at Qingyang Palace in Chengdu (which continues to this day), and flower growers and bonsai artists from various places sent all kinds of finished tree trunk bonsai to the fair for display and sale. By this time, tree trunk bonsai had fully adopted the “three forms and five types” modeling techniques. To date, Sichuan's tree trunk training and binding, whatever the form, has basically not gone beyond the techniques and modeling rules formed and widely adopted during this period. In the late Qing and early Republic of China, there were about 60 famous training and binding artisans in Chengdu and the various counties, among the most famous being Dou Yupeng, Chen Hongshun, Zhang Binru, Chen Yushan, Dai Kaidi, Dai Chongguang, Gong Yinru, Li Hongtai, and Ji Chengjiu. By the 1940s, natural-style tree trunk bonsai rose again, but in training and binding techniques it was roughly the same as the regular style; apart from the cliff style, the modeling of some natural-style trunks was almost a matter of chance “opportunity.” Chen Sifu's father, Chen Yushan, often took tree stock with incomplete branches, unsuitable for making regular-style bonsai, and worked it along its natural tendency into the natural style. Afterward, Li Zhongyu, along with Qiu Kaichun and Wang Mingwen and others, developed the natural style, which gradually became one of the two major main types of Sichuan-style tree trunk bonsai today.

Sichuan-style landscape bonsai, although already showing hints as far back as the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, especially in the cliff carvings of Yuanjue Cave in Anyue County and Dafo Bay in Dazu County, where the mountain-and-water bonsai held in the hands of flying apsaras and attendant maidens already closely resembled today's shallow-water landscape bonsai, nevertheless, because Ming and Qing bonsai leaned toward tree trunks, it was not until nearly a thousand years later, in the 1940s and 1950s, that a group of horticulturists, painters, and bonsai “enthusiasts” cooperated closely to bring it to maturity.

Generally speaking, the artistic style of Sichuan-style bonsai: tree trunks are characterized by antiquity, simplicity, rigor, and twisted, varied forms; landscape bonsai wins by majestic momentum, being high, overhanging, steep, and deep, typically expressing the natural scenery of the Ba-Shu mountains and rivers.

Owing to its uniquely favorable natural conditions, Sichuan-style tree trunk bonsai generally uses king's gold bullet (Diospyros cathayensis), snow-in-June (Serissa japonica), Buddhist pine (Podocarpus macrophyllus), ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), Chaenomeles speciosa, plum blossom (Prunus mume), firethorn (Pyracantha), camellia (Camellia japonica), and azalea (Rhododendron), etc.; landscape bonsai uses sand flake stone, stalactite, mica stone, sand-accumulated stone, turtle-vein stone, and newly developed varieties as production stone materials.

Chinese bonsai schools - Sichuan-style bonsai

        Sichuan was called Ba-Shu in ancient times. In the first year of the Zhenguan era of the Tang Dynasty (627 AD), the Jiannan Circuit was established, so in the past Sichuan-style bonsai was also called “Jiannan bonsai”. After Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the provincial seat was moved to Yizhou, which is present-day Chengdu, and its jurisdiction covered not only Sichuan but also parts of Yunnan and Guizhou.
The distinctive mountains and rivers of Ba-Shu, through a long historical process, gave birth to the distinctive Ba-Shu culture. According to the Records of the Kings of Shu and the Chronicles of Huayang: “From Kaiming up to Cancong, thirty-four thousand years accumulated,” and “The state of Shu began with the Renhuang.” If these records lean toward legend, then the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan is enough to prove the long history of Ba-Shu culture. As early as the period equivalent to the late Neolithic Age to the early Western Zhou (about 4500 to 2900 years ago), the bronze objects cast in Sichuan, such as bronze human figures, had never been seen at other sites, and their physical features and clothing differed from those of the Huaxia people; the forms of other objects were also mostly unseen in the Central Plains region. Although some objects resemble those of the Central Plains, in terms of overall characteristics they are not the same as the culture of the Central Plains or other regions, possessing a striking local character and having initially formed an independent cultural system.
The development of Sichuan-style bonsai art went through a process in modeling from simple to complex, and then from complex to simple; the first “simple” meant plain, and the latter “simple” means concise. Like other bonsai schools, based on the modeling principle of “tree form close to painting,” the natural style came first, and later, by imitating the posture and variations of old trees, technical rules for expressing such posture and variation were continually summarized. Through the creation and refinement of bonsai artists over successive generations, these were finally reduced to 10 body styles and 3 forms and 5 types. Bonsai master Chen Sifu wrote in his monograph The Art of Training and Binding Bonsai Trunks: “If we consider the regular-style flat-branch form of trunk, the modeling in Chengdu and western Sichuan with curved main trunks and downward-slanting branch tips imitates the low, aged state of pines and cypresses in the high, cold regions of Mount Emei that have long been pressed down by accumulated snow; after the snow melts, the treetops stand upright, and the branches turn from drooping to extended or slightly slanting. Therefore, in the regular-type flat-branch form of trunk, the branch pads gradually slope downward and flatten toward the pad ends, or the base of the branch pad slants downward and the pad slopes slightly downward and flattens.” This shows that the regular style comes from life. But it is also higher than life; it is an artistic generalization and artistic processing of nature, and furthermore, like the “metricalization” of classical poetry, it serves to concentrate and display the basic principles of traditional aesthetics: the beauty of symmetry, the beauty of balance, the beauty of rhythm, seeking change within unity and unity within change, lively yet orderly, solemn yet nimble. “It breaks free from the blind control of natural phenomena over bonsai art, governing its objects of reflection with sober reason and abundant emotion. On the one hand it reproduces nature; on the other hand it actively expresses humanity's aesthetic ideals about nature. In artistic form, it takes rigorous meter as its basic structural principle; it is the ‘regulated verse’ among bonsai.” (Tang Chunlai: "Exploration of the Beauty of Regular-Type Tree Trunk Bonsai," in Studies on Chengdu Bonsai).
Precisely because the regular style has very high aesthetic value, the natural style gradually “faded” along with it, retaining only a very few cliff styles; the well-preserved “old-age” tree trunk bonsai that survive today are the most convincing testimony. In the late Qing Dynasty, on the fifteenth day of the second lunar month each year, a flower fair was held at Qingyang Palace in Chengdu (which continues to this day), and flower growers and bonsai artists from various places sent all kinds of finished tree trunk bonsai to the fair for display and sale. By this time, tree trunk bonsai had fully adopted the “three forms and five types” modeling techniques. To date, Sichuan's tree trunk training and binding, whatever the form, has basically not gone beyond the techniques and modeling rules formed and widely adopted during this period. In the late Qing and early Republic of China, there were about 60 famous training and binding artisans in Chengdu and the various counties, among the most famous being Dou Yupeng, Chen Hongshun, Zhang Binru, Chen Yushan, Dai Kaidi, Dai Chongguang, Gong Yinru, Li Hongtai, and Ji Chengjiu. By the 1940s, natural-style tree trunk bonsai rose again, but in training and binding techniques it was roughly the same as the regular style; apart from the cliff style, the modeling of some natural-style trunks was almost a matter of chance “opportunity.” Chen Sifu's father, Chen Yushan, often took tree stock with incomplete branches, unsuitable for making regular-style bonsai, and worked it along its natural tendency into the natural style. Afterward, Li Zhongyu, along with Qiu Kaichun and Wang Mingwen and others, developed the natural style, which gradually became one of the two major main types of Sichuan-style tree trunk bonsai today.
Sichuan-style landscape bonsai, although already showing hints as far back as the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, especially in the cliff carvings of Yuanjue Cave in Anyue County and Dafo Bay in Dazu County, where the mountain-and-water bonsai held in the hands of flying apsaras and attendant maidens already closely resembled today's shallow-water landscape bonsai, nevertheless, because Ming and Qing bonsai leaned toward tree trunks, it was not until nearly a thousand years later, in the 1940s and 1950s, that a group of horticulturists, painters, and bonsai “enthusiasts” cooperated closely to bring it to maturity.
Generally speaking, the artistic style of Sichuan-style bonsai: tree trunks are characterized by antiquity, simplicity, rigor, and twisted, varied forms; landscape bonsai wins by majestic momentum, being high, overhanging, steep, and deep, typically expressing the natural scenery of the Ba-Shu mountains and rivers.

Chinese bonsai schools - Sichuan style

The distinctive mountains and rivers of Ba-Shu, through a long historical process, gave birth to the distinctive Ba-Shu culture. According to the Records of the Kings of Shu and the Chronicles of Huayang: “From Kaiming up to Cancong, thirty-four thousand years accumulated,” and “The state of Shu began with the Renhuang.” If these records lean toward legend, then the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan is enough to prove the long history of Ba-Shu culture. As early as the period equivalent to the late Neolithic Age to the early Western Zhou (about 4500 to 2900 years ago), the bronze objects cast in Sichuan, such as bronze human figures, had never been seen at other sites, and their physical features and clothing differed from those of the Huaxia people; the forms of other objects were also mostly unseen in the Central Plains region. Although some objects resemble those of the Central Plains, in terms of overall characteristics they are not the same as the culture of the Central Plains or other regions, possessing a striking local character and having initially formed an independent cultural system.

The development of Sichuan-style bonsai art went through a process in modeling from simple to complex, and then from complex to simple; the first “simple” meant plain, and the latter “simple” means concise. Like other bonsai schools, based on the modeling principle of “tree form close to painting,” the natural style came first, and later, by imitating the posture and variations of old trees, technical rules for expressing such posture and variation were continually summarized. Through the creation and refinement of bonsai artists over successive generations, these were finally reduced to 10 body styles and 3 forms and 5 types. Bonsai master Chen Sifu wrote in his monograph The Art of Training and Binding Bonsai Trunks: “If we consider the regular-style flat-branch form of trunk, the modeling in Chengdu and western Sichuan with curved main trunks and downward-slanting branch tips imitates the low, aged state of pines and cypresses in the high, cold regions of Mount Emei that have long been pressed down by accumulated snow; after the snow melts, the treetops stand upright, and the branches turn from drooping to extended or slightly slanting. Therefore, in the regular-type flat-branch form of trunk, the branch pads gradually slope downward and flatten toward the pad ends, or the base of the branch pad slants downward and the pad slopes slightly downward and flattens.” This shows that the regular style comes from life. But it is also higher than life; it is an artistic generalization and artistic processing of nature, and furthermore, like the “metricalization” of classical poetry, it serves to concentrate and display the basic principles of traditional aesthetics: the beauty of symmetry, the beauty of balance, the beauty of rhythm, seeking change within unity and unity within change, lively yet orderly, solemn yet nimble. “It breaks free from the blind control of natural phenomena over bonsai art, governing its objects of reflection with sober reason and abundant emotion. On the one hand it reproduces nature; on the other hand it actively expresses humanity's aesthetic ideals about nature. In artistic form, it takes rigorous meter as its basic structural principle; it is the ‘regulated verse’ among bonsai.” (Tang Chunlai: "Exploration of the Beauty of Regular-Type Tree Trunk Bonsai," in Studies on Chengdu Bonsai).

Precisely because the regular style has very high aesthetic value, the natural style gradually “faded” along with it, retaining only a very few cliff styles; the well-preserved “old-age” tree trunk bonsai that survive today are the most convincing testimony. In the late Qing Dynasty, on the fifteenth day of the second lunar month each year, a flower fair was held at Qingyang Palace in Chengdu (which continues to this day), and flower growers and bonsai artists from various places sent all kinds of finished tree trunk bonsai to the fair for display and sale. By this time, tree trunk bonsai had fully adopted the “three forms and five types” modeling techniques. To date, Sichuan's tree trunk training and binding, whatever the form, has basically not gone beyond the techniques and modeling rules formed and widely adopted during this period. In the late Qing and early Republic of China, there were about 60 famous training and binding artisans in Chengdu and the various counties, among the most famous being Dou Yupeng, Chen Hongshun, Zhang Binru, Chen Yushan, Dai Kaidi, Dai Chongguang, Gong Yinru, Li Hongtai, and Ji Chengjiu. By the 1940s, natural-style tree trunk bonsai rose again, but in training and binding techniques it was roughly the same as the regular style; apart from the cliff style, the modeling of some natural-style trunks was almost a matter of chance “opportunity.” Chen Sifu's father, Chen Yushan, often took tree stock with incomplete branches, unsuitable for making regular-style bonsai, and worked it along its natural tendency into the natural style. Afterward, Li Zhongyu, along with Qiu Kaichun and Wang Mingwen and others, developed the natural style, which gradually became one of the two major main types of Sichuan-style tree trunk bonsai today.

Sichuan-style landscape bonsai, although already showing hints as far back as the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, especially in the cliff carvings of Yuanjue Cave in Anyue County and Dafo Bay in Dazu County, where the mountain-and-water bonsai held in the hands of flying apsaras and attendant maidens already closely resembled today's shallow-water landscape bonsai, nevertheless, because Ming and Qing bonsai leaned toward tree trunks, it was not until nearly a thousand years later, in the 1940s and 1950s, that a group of horticulturists, painters, and bonsai “enthusiasts” cooperated closely to bring it to maturity.

Generally speaking, the artistic style of Sichuan-style bonsai: tree trunks are characterized by antiquity, simplicity, rigor, and twisted, varied forms; landscape bonsai wins by majestic momentum, being high, overhanging, steep, and deep, typically expressing the natural scenery of the Ba-Shu mountains and rivers.

Owing to its uniquely favorable natural conditions, Sichuan-style tree trunk bonsai generally uses king's gold bullet (Diospyros cathayensis), snow-in-June (Serissa japonica), Buddhist pine (Podocarpus macrophyllus), ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), Chaenomeles speciosa, plum blossom (Prunus mume), firethorn (Pyracantha), camellia (Camellia japonica), and azalea (Rhododendron), etc.; landscape bonsai uses sand flake stone, stalactite, mica stone, sand-accumulated stone, turtle-vein stone, and newly developed varieties as production stone materials.