Bonsai is addictive, don't touch it if you don't have to, many people have already fallen into the pit

After dealing with many people who love bonsai, I realized that so many of them share this sentiment, feeling that they have fallen into the pit. Speaking of this topic, it's a bit funny to say that bonsai is addictive, because once you fall in love with it, you become obsessed and can't extricate yourself. The old notion was that bonsai was something only retired cadres or people with plenty of spare time would play with. And it seemed very delicate.

Some enthusiasts who grow flowers, plants and play with bonsai are like scavengers, picking up everything and bringing it home. Tidying it up to use as flower pots. A few days ago, I visited an old man who had been playing with bonsai for 30 years, and he said something very interesting. This stuff is addictive, why touch it. As he said this, it made people quite surprised, and then he continued. When I first started making bonsai, I was obsessed.

After bringing back the stumps, keeping them alive and potting them up, when it came to styling, I would suffer from insomnia night after night. Because people who truly understand bonsai all have their own unique perspective. Often, after shaping it during the day, just lying in bed after an exhausting day, I would feel that a branch had been twisted in the wrong direction during the day, and I would get up again and go twist the branch. Often, I would work on it all night.

Listening to the old man's words, I immediately felt respect. During the chat, although he was an expert, he still felt like a layman. When talking about his own works, he was also very knowledgeable. Compared with some current bonsai works, they indeed lack the settling of time and are too commercialized. Many are just casually shaped and then put out for sale, but people who don't understand this industry and bonsai works are both curious and unfamiliar with it. They can only use their past notions to judge good from bad. Having heard too many other people's words, it instead affected their own judgment.

Actually, when it comes to bonsai, besides needing to understand the basic situation of tree species and some simple common sense about growing flowers and plants, you could say the rest is all empirical talk. Everyone has their own view on branch styling, and the specific styling methods are nothing more than those few. However, if you truly love the art of bonsai, then you need to be prepared to invest time, and you will eventually create a work that satisfies you.