A bonsai enthusiast's brief discussion of eight suggestions for narrowing the gap between Chinese and Japanese bonsai
Returning recently from the "China Zun" event in Yuyao, I have many reflections: admiration for the contributions made to China's bonsai cause by more industrialists like Principal Ma of Gaofeng Middle School, reflection on the exhibition halls full of imported Japanese bonsai, reflection on Kunio Kobayashi's bonsai skills, reflection that the quality of Chinese bonsai has not aligned with world standards but its price already has fully aligned with them, and reflection that the gap between Chinese and Japanese bonsai has narrowed on the surface but is in fact growing wider and wider. With these reflections, I want even more to write some heartfelt words to bonsai lovers and to those engaged in the bonsai profession. Setting aside the technical level, the biggest gap I see between Chinese and Japanese bonsai lies in "details," so I define the key to growing good bonsai as "taking details to the extreme." Below are some views and suggestions I have analyzed from the perspective of "details," and I hope bonsai enthusiasts who share these thoughts will encourage one another.
1. Be good at observing, and record carefully; a good memory is no match for a worn-out pen. First, let me talk about "observation." Observation can be divided into several aspects: observation of the plant's growth process through the four seasons, observation of how yearly changes in climate and temperature affect the plant's growth state, observation of the plant's growth state before and after maintenance work and shaping work, and so on. Then there is "recording": carefully record the results of these observations, especially the parts that have changed, so that comparisons can be made and the best time nodes for maintenance work and shaping work can be found. These "observations" and "records" can also leave evidence-based material for oneself and for later generations, laying a solid foundation for future bonsai enthusiasts to take fewer detours. However good one's memory is, it is still no match for meticulous records, so if you want to grow bonsai well, you must "observe" and "record" every bonsai you care for.
2. Accurately grasp the timing of work for each plant, and conscientiously complete every task. The so-called "accurately grasp the timing of work for each plant" is not about borrowing ready-made ideas wholesale, not about doing the work whenever a book says to do it, and not about doing the work whenever some master says to do it. Of course, professional books and the suggestions of experienced bonsai enthusiasts are important references, but under different regions, different climates and temperatures, different plant growth states, and different maintenance conditions and environments, the timing of work for each plant is still different. This requires us, after "being good at observing and recording carefully," to find the best timing for the work, rather than making a sweeping generalization. After finding the best timing for the work, we need to "conscientiously complete every task," without the slightest carelessness, because a little carelessness today may cost much more time to make up for later. So it is better to spend a little more time today; whatever can be done properly must be done properly.
3. Erase the notion that bonsai is just styling, and maintenance must be placed in an important position. What is the prerequisite for enjoying bonsai well? In my personal view, the first thing is to keep the bonsai alive and grow it well. What is the key to keeping it alive and growing it well? It is the basic daily maintenance. Therefore, the daily maintenance of bonsai must be placed in an important position if one is to enjoy bonsai well. Only after maintaining the bonsai properly should you pursue your ideal of bonsai form; the form of bonsai requires repeated maintenance to be realized!
4. Bonsai design must proceed from reality; making bonsai is not painting bonsai. I see many bonsai friends on forums asking everywhere for designs as soon as they buy raw stock. I ask, if the stock material has not yet been kept alive and grown strong, where does the design come from? Besides, even if it is kept alive, if there are no buds at the places where branches should emerge, how will your design be realized? Making bonsai is not painting bonsai; branches will not sprout buds wherever you want them. You must be down-to-earth, start from the material itself, and after growing the material well and strong, design according to the actual distribution of buds and branches, seeking the best design plan. Bonsai is not something imagined out of thin air, nor can it remain only on paper; your bonsai design must be realized according to reality. This is the true essence of bonsai design.
5. Take the standard tree form to the extreme, then pursue so-called "artistic conception." What is a "standard tree form"? It is one that conforms to the proportions and standards of that tree form in terms of root base, trunk, branches, pads, apex, and supporting branches. Bonsai enthusiasts should start from the standard, take the standard tree form to the extreme, and then pursue "artistic conception." The reason is simple: only after the "Sage of Calligraphy" Wang Xizhi finished practicing with the water of eighteen large vats did his writing have sinew and bone. It was not that his first character already had "artistic conception." "Artistic conception" is the cultural cultivation of a bonsai enthusiast and their understanding of bonsai; in other words, it is not the work of a single day, but requires the accumulation of time and the sedimentation of art. Even more, do not use this as an excuse to belittle Japanese bonsai. Artistic conception is not an excuse for narrowing the gap between Chinese and Japanese bonsai; it is the higher pursuit of Chinese bonsai enthusiasts.
6. Do not excessively pursue varieties; pay attention to the adaptability of varieties to the local environment. Bonsai is a shaping art; there is no best variety, only the most suitable variety! I once said this: Japan has new varieties every year, and then sells the varieties it has grown tired of playing with to you Chinese. If we always follow Japan, where is the hope for Chinese bonsai? Many Japanese varieties are not native varieties either; many were introduced from our country, and then, after optimization and selection, new varieties were bred. Chinese bonsai enthusiasts should start from themselves, and can also select and breed excellent local varieties, appropriately introduce excellent foreign varieties, and cultivate bonsai with varieties that have their own characteristics. Bonsai cultivated in this way is more adaptable to the local climate and easier to maintain and shape!
7. Discuss and exchange more; do not waste any material, and do not give up on any material. Many bonsai friends, as soon as they get material in hand, wrap and bend it or prune it without thinking twice. This kind of operation is seriously wrong. No matter what material you get, you cannot rush to act. First, let the material adapt to your local climate and maintenance conditions. Second, you should deliberate more yourself and discuss more with bonsai friends to find the best design plan suitable for the material, because some branches, once removed, require time to grow back, and some, once removed, will never grow back. Cherish every piece of material, because they all have life; do not give up on any material, because even the poorest material has a beautiful side.
8. Treat bonsai as a "lover," not as a "wife"! "Treat bonsai as a 'lover,' not as a 'wife'!" To sum it up in four words: "do not settle." Do not settle in maintenance, do not settle in styling, do not settle in pot pairing, do not settle in base plates and stands, do not settle in accompanying scenery... Only with higher pursuits can Chinese bonsai have hope, and only then does Chinese bonsai have a direction to strive toward...
A brief discussion of the art of bonsai
Bonsai is an original creation of our country and has a long history. It mainly uses flower pots of various depths and distinctive forms to plant artistically processed plant materials or imitate the mountain and water scenery of nature, arranged with pot stones to form artistic ornamental works. Because shaping differs from place to place in our country, styles vary greatly, forming many schools, such as the Lingnan school, the Su school, and the Chuan school.
Bonsai is the epitome of nature. Imitating nature's graceful bearing and divine colors, beautiful mountains and clear waters, within a square-inch pot, it fully displays the changes of natural vitality and the four-season scenery of trees flourishing and withering, allowing people to gain endless insight from it. Literati and refined scholars of past dynasties loved to adorn their lives with bonsai and cultivate their character. Chinese bonsai has a long history and a distant source; it originated in the Six Dynasties, began in the early Tang, developed in the Song Dynasty, and flourished in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. After Liberation, and especially since reform and opening up, the bonsai and flower industry has entered a new period of prosperity. Our city has held many bonsai exhibitions, each of a higher standard than the last, delighting visitors and letting them personally experience scenery that is not nature yet surpasses nature. Modern life makes more people long to be close to nature. Placing a bonsai in the house is both antique and elegant and appears full of vitality.
According to differences in materials and production, bonsai can be divided into two major categories: tree stump bonsai and landscape bonsai. Tree stump bonsai, abbreviated as stump scenery, generally refers to bonsai for appreciating the bearing, color, and charm of the roots, trunks, leaves, flowers, and fruit of ornamental plants. Generally, plants with graceful posture, short stature and small leaves, long life, strong resistance, and easy shaping are selected. According to their ecological characteristics and artistic requirements, through techniques such as pruning, branch training, wiring and bending, or grafting, and through careful cultivation, their growth and development are controlled over the long term to form unique artistic shapes. Some are vigorous and ancient, with old trunks and gnarled branches; some have sparse branches and leaves, with horizontal strips and slanting shadows; some are gracefully upright, tall and towering. Types of stump scenery include the straight-trunk style, twisted style, horizontal-branch style, cliff style, weeping-branch style, exposed-root style, forest style, and epiphytic style. With different techniques used, their shaping characteristics and artistic styles each have their own merits. Guangzhou and local areas commonly use orange jasmine, Fujian tea, plum pine, banyan, elm, and snow-in-summer as stump scenery materials, pruning them into shape, natural and smooth. This technique is called "Lingnan bonsai." In the Yangzhou area, boxwood, Chinese juniper, five-needle pine, deodar cedar, and Chinese elm are often shaped by artificial clipping and bending, with three bends per inch of branch and clear layers, called "Su school bonsai." In Sichuan, plants such as golden dewdrop, ginkgo, crape myrtle, and red fruit have suspended roots and exposed claws, ancient, strange, and elegant, called "Chuan school bonsai." Guangxi's "cloud pot tree stumps" and others are full of wild charm and uniquely distinctive.
Landscape bonsai, also called water-and-stone bonsai, is made by subjecting mountain stones to artistic and technical treatments such as carving, erosion, and joining, arranging them in elegant shallow pots, decorating them with pavilions, boats, and bridges, and planting small trees and moss to form beautiful natural mountain-and-water scenery. One type of mountain stone material is hard stone, which is hard in texture, does not absorb water, and is difficult for moss to grow on, such as Ying stone, Taihu stone, stalactite, axe-cut stone, wood fossil, and Kowloon jade stone. Another type is soft stone, which is relatively loose in texture, easily absorbs water, and can grow moss, such as chicken-bone stone, reed-pipe stone, pumice, and sandstone-accumulated stone. The shapes of landscape bonsai include the solitary peak style, overlapping style, and sparse-dense style. Because mountain stone materials differ in quality, grain, shape, and color, the artistic techniques and technical methods used also differ. Therefore, the themes they express and the styles they possess each have their own strengths. Stalactite bonsai focuses on expressing the beauty of Guilin's landscape with secluded cave rocks and sudden strange peaks; sandstone-accumulated stone bonsai reproduces the magnificent wonders of "Mount Emei's beauty under heaven" and "the Three Gorges' danger under heaven." Landscape bonsai is small and exquisite, with profound artistic conception.
The art of bonsai uses the artistic techniques of "shrinking a dragon into an inch" and "seeing the great in the small," giving people the artistic impression that "one peak suggests Mount Hua's thousand fathoms, one spoon suggests rivers and lakes ten thousand miles away." It is the epitome of natural scenery. It comes from nature, is higher than nature, and follows the principles of nature. It skillfully rivals the workmanship of nature. The art of bonsai excels through poetic sentiment and pictorial imagery. People praise bonsai as "silent poetry," "three-dimensional painting," and "living artistic sculpture." If, in our spare time, we cultivate and make one or two tree stump bonsai or landscape bonsai, it will bring endless joy to your life.
[Bonsai Techniques] A brief discussion of the conception of bonsai shaping
In real environments, there are after all very few trees that are truly perfect and suitable for bonsai aesthetic shaping. They often carry many limitations, such as missing branches, or being too smooth, or messy, or withered... This determines that bonsai artists need to artistically process and craft the trees so that they become a bonsai artwork that looks forward and responds, has appropriate density, clear layers, and mutually generating emptiness and solidity, and is as perfect as possible. Therefore, the shaping techniques of tree bonsai are an indispensable part of making up for the defects of the trees themselves and raising the aesthetic interest of bonsai art. Before creating a bonsai artistic shape, the first thing that must be considered is the overall conception and design of the tree's shaping.A complete tree bonsai work condenses the artist's wisdom and painstaking effort, and is completed only through his careful crafting. Therefore, its finished creation is not something that can be completed overnight or with a single stroke, but must be completed through the efforts of several years, several decades, or even several generations. Although time continually moves and changes, the bonsai artist's expressive intention and overall grasp of each work remain basically consistent throughout. From this it can be seen that the conception and design orientation before the creation of a bonsai artwork is very important.
The "intention before the brush," required in poetry and prose writing, also applies to the creation of tree bonsai works. Because tree materials differ in species and characteristics, their images vary, and their postures are manifold, the maker needs, according to the characteristics and form of the tree species material, to repeatedly observe and ponder in order to decide the shaping style and the conception it expresses, and to carry out the basic overall conception of the tree form by "adapting measures to the material and fostering strengths while avoiding weaknesses," drawing a blueprint in the mind, or drawing a design composition on paper, forming a relatively complete artistic thread of thought: such as the tall and upright bearing of the "straight-trunk style," the precipitous vastness of the "slanting-trunk style," and the tenacious firmness of the "wind-blown style." These scenes are all epitomes directly reflected in the human brain by nature, and the maker's conception is precisely the combination of his thoughts and the tree to be shaped. It requires that it both conform to natural reason and not be fabricated out of thin air, and also be higher than natural scenery, rather than a simple reproduction of nature. It should "learn from nature" yet surpass nature. Through careful observation, analysis, and study of the tree, taking its major essentials and removing its clutter, the original tree is trimmed and processed according to the design blueprint, and techniques such as artistic intensification, deformation, and exaggeration are used to make the tree bonsai achieve an artistic beauty that, although artificially created, is rich in "natural wild charm."
The roots, trunk, branches, and leaves of bonsai trees should be the main objects considered in conception and design. The mutual coordination and connection of these four aspects determine the overall direction of the tree form design, and also determine the future thematic intention. The same slanting and curved-trunk tree, through artificial techniques, after treatment of roots and branches, can be made into a "slanting-drift style" (waterside style) or "cliff style" bonsai. The same straight-trunk tree can also, through wiring, bending, and carving techniques, be made into a "curved-trunk style" or "decayed-trunk style" bonsai, and so on. This is precisely the subjective initiative of artificial shaping techniques, the result of artistic processing according to the overall conception and design. In summarizing the overall conception and design of the overall shaping of a tree, the following questions should be considered: 1. Clarify the theme. A tree bonsai is like a painting, a poem, or a novel, with an expressive intention for its central content. The difference is that the modes of expression are not the same: the modes of expression of painting, poetry, and prose are figures depicted with lines and colors, and people and artistic conception portrayed with words, while a tree expresses its thematic content through the depiction of images, making people feel as if they are in the scene after viewing it, rich in "poetic sentiment and pictorial imagery." For example: to express a vigorous theme, the tree's trunk must be rough and sturdy, with luxuriant branches and leaves; to express a precipitous theme, the "cliff style" shape can be used, making the tree's branches and trunk bend downward from a high place; and to express a theme of age and wild charm, emphasis should be placed on depicting the tree trunk's decayed holes and mottled marks, and the short, curved characteristics of its branches. Therefore, the theme of a tree bonsai actually centrally expresses people's feelings about the overall aesthetic viewpoint, their feelings about ideas, and their feelings about image thinking. In the overall conception and design of tree bonsai shaping, there must first be a clear theme, so that the creator can determine a good thread of thought and vision, and based on it create a tree bonsai work with a distinct theme, vivid images, and full of delightful interest.
2. Distinguish primary from secondary. A tree bonsai is like the notes and tones of music: although there are distinctions of strong and weak, high and low, the main melody is clear. Therefore, when determining the shaping intention of a tree, primary and secondary must be distinct, the parts must be subordinate to the whole, the main melody must be highlighted and emphasized, and the other partial base tones should serve as coordination and foil, so that the work is both rich in layered variation and unified and harmonious as a whole. For example: in a "wind-blown style" tree bonsai expressing ancient age, the main emphasis should be on the changes in the leaves; in an "exposed-root style" tree bonsai expressing gnarled and intertwined roots, the main emphasis should be on the changes in the root system; in a "decayed-trunk style" tree bonsai expressing having endured the vicissitudes of life, the main emphasis should be on the trunk, and so on.
3. Take and discard appropriately. Because tree bonsai has the characteristic of continuous growth, it is a "living three-dimensional painting," injecting vigorous vitality into the bonsai work. But the growth of trees is not always as one wishes; they often grow messy branches and disorderly leaves, like tangled hemp. Facing such a tree bonsai, the bonsai maker must have a clear plan, assess the situation according to its overall image, and decide the taking and discarding of the tree's roots, branches, trunk, and leaves in terms of height, front and back, and left and right, so that it conforms to the shaping rules of "shrinking a dragon into an inch" and "seeing the great in the small." For example: in a "straight-trunk vigorous style" bonsai tree, the first branch cannot be left too low, because too low will certainly weaken the air of strength and uprightness; while in a straight-trunk thick "large tree type" bonsai tree, the first main branch cannot be left too high, because too high will certainly weaken the characteristics of rich moisture and luxuriance; in works expressing a sparse and wild style, the trunk should be sparse rather than dense; in works expressing a prosperous and luxuriant style, the trunk should be curved rather than straight; in works expressing a firm and vigorous style, the trunk may be straight but not curved, and so on.
4. Innovate the conception. Looking broadly at the development history of tree bonsai, every school once created and formed its own unique style. For example, the "Yangzhou school's" wiring technique of "three bends per inch" created the light, ingenious, and elegant "cloud pad" style; the "Lingnan school's" technique of "storing branches and cutting the trunk" created a free, unrestrained, and wild style, and so on. All of them continuously innovated and developed with changes in the times, customs, climate, and concepts. It should be clear that shaping techniques and style are mutually opposed and unified; shaping techniques are the means, while creating new styles and new conceptions is the true goal. Previous generations explored and innovated in bonsai art countless times, leaving us a precious legacy. Modern bonsai art should even more "let a hundred flowers bloom," be diverse and colorful, and must not remain wandering on the path of predecessors. It should turn the ordinary into the magical, boldly innovate and develop, and create good works that can embody the modern spirit. This requires bonsai artists to continuously improve their artistic attainments, to humbly learn the styles and techniques of bonsai art schools at home and abroad, to absorb their various strengths and merits, and to enrich and improve themselves. In the overall conception, they should continuously explore and innovate, enriching the content and style of tree bonsai works to meet the needs of the development of the times.
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