How can penjing creation use ingenious and clever layout to achieve the effect of seeing the large within the small?

  Once the rough plan is formed, the layout can proceed according to established rules. Layout means arranging and placing the scenery, that is, modeling. Whatever theme is expressed, penjing emphasizes the artistic effect of seeing the large within the small even more than gardens do. The better this effect, the higher the artistic value of the penjing.

  Although among penjing there are large penjing, compared with towering ancient trees and a vast landscape of rivers and mountains they are still small, and moreover ordinary penjing are all small and medium-sized penjing. To present a scene of a thousand cliffs and ten thousand ravines in a pot 20 or 30 cm or even a bit larger, one must be skilled at layout in order to achieve the artistic effect of seeing the large within the small. Bai Juyi wrote in the poem "Inscribed on the Newly Built Small Shoal at the Residence of Lord Niu Xianggong in Guiren Lane": “Moreover, within this vermilion gate... Luoyang stones piled into a thousand fist-like peaks... two cliffs at the glittering water's edge, one pool of the Xiaoxiang sky... the sound of the Ba Gorge in the heart, the scenery of the Song River before the eyes.” Within the vermilion gate, a large penjing, with sound and color, majestic and powerful, how profound and moving its artistic conception!

  In the Song Dynasty, Su Dongpo picked up two stones in Yangzhou and made a penjing, “one sees the jade peak lying across Taibai, then from the bird path cuts off Emei”; the penjing he created could, within “one palm” and “one pot,” attain the artistic conception of the “three peaks,” “Jiuhua,” “Five Ridges,” and “a thousand peaks.” This is the most ingenious typical example of applying the technique of seeing the large within the small. The poet Lu You's penjing also applied the artistic technique of “digging a pool to hold a measure of water, piling stones to imitate distant peaks.” So how can one achieve seeing the large within the small and obtain the effect of expanding artistic space?

  First, use the principle of scattered-point perspective to increase the layers. The so-called scattered-point perspective means viewing scenery from many different points, as if looking at Emei from below the mountain, where one sees only one layer of mountain and cannot see layer upon layer, still less hills, valleys, and streams. Another example: to express the artistic conception of “one only sees the Yangtze flowing to the edge of the sky,” one can arrange the mountains on this shore to be low and the high mountains on the opposite shore to be steep and towering; in this way the viewer can have the feeling that the water area is vast and far-reaching, with no end in sight. Although this kind of modeling differs from the one-point perspective principle of near-large and far-small, is the effect produced the same?

  Therefore, when laying out, one should apply scattered-point perspective, that is, the layers of myriad piled clouds and mountains seen in “viewing the small from the large,” and express them by the technique of “shrinking the dragon to a cun,” that is, dividing the limited space of a foot or so into several grades; then one can obtain the effect of expanding the depth of scene and enriching the layers. When viewing penjing, because of the emotional impact of a level view of scenery, one feels that the water stretches ten thousand li; because of the emotional impact of looking up at scenery, one feels that the height reaches a thousand ren. The creator observes real mountains and real waters, and when creating penjing must use the principle of scattered-point perspective. Since the viewer, when appreciating the penjing, is always viewing from a certain point, the creative work must also take into consideration the viewing effect of one-point perspective.

  Therefore, in creating penjing, in addition to following the above principles, corresponding treatment must also be made at different levels in vertical height and horizontal direction. For mountain and rock textures, near ones should be fine and delicate, far ones should be generalized; lower ones should be clear, upper ones should be blurred; near trees should be large, far trees should be small, and the farthest mountains and forests may even be represented simply by green moss. For the farthest and highest scenery, even green moss is not used. For distant and near scenes, the lines and contours of the near should not be the same as those of the near. Penjing often have three layers; if the outer layer is horizontal, the middle layer must be mostly vertical, and the inner layer should again use horizontal. This is the “threefold method of far, middle, and near” in penjing layout. Some people have the taboos of making mountains with “the starting foot should be small” and “do not plant trees on high mountains.” Wang Wei's statement in "The Method of Landscape Painting: On Landscape" that “distant people have no eyes, distant trees have no branches, distant mountains have no stones, faintly like eyebrows...” is also a vivid portrayal of the emotional impact of level-view scenery.

  Second, pay attention to proportion, contrast, and setting off. If penjing is to achieve the effect of seeing the large within the small, attention must be paid to the appropriate proportion of objects and colors in the pot, and the technique of contrast and setting off must be applied; this is very important. “A zhang of mountain, a chi of tree; a cun of horse, a fen of man” speaks of the approximate proportional relationship of sizes and measures; “birds sing and the mountain is more secluded; cicadas chirp and the forest is stiller” speaks of the setting-off technique of seeking quiet through noise. All things are distinguished through comparison. Height and lowness, largeness and smallness, slanting and straightness, brightness and darkness, thickness and thinness, sparseness and denseness, motion and stillness, and so on, all exist because of comparison. Everything on Earth, together with the Earth, moves at the same speed; without a still object as reference, one cannot distinguish them. Chinese painting often uses reference objects for contrast; the use of contrast is an important means by which penjing achieves the artistic effect of seeing the large within the small. Its methods include:

  1. Use low mountains to set off the steepness and towering height of high mountains;

  2. Use extremely small old-looking trees to set off the majestic power of high mountains;

  3. Use extremely small bridge pavilions, towers, boats, figures, and other decorative objects as proportional scales to set off the vastness and expanse of water areas and the winding, majestic force of mountain ranges;

  4. Use a shallow pot to set off the towering grandeur of the scenery;

  5. Use sparseness to set off distance. For example, in the “Hundred-Li Picture of the Li River” created by the Guilin artist Qin Zhuyi, he ingeniously applied near-large and far-small, near-fine and far-generalized, sparse scattered points, using asparagus fern to replace the emerald bamboo along the banks of the Li River, and using a long shallow pot 12 m long to set off the clear water surface of the Li River and the towering, undulating mountains, gathering the main beautiful scenes of the Li River into the pot; thus he achieved good results in artistic effect.

   When using decorative objects (also called ornaments), they must not be too large or too many, otherwise they will lose their function as proportional scale and degenerate into vulgar pieces. In arranging layered mountains and steep ridges and shifting heaven and shrinking earth into a small pot, if the hiding is done ingeniously, the viewer can feel unable to tell how much there is in front of and behind the mountain, or to the left and right of the mountain, and thus produce associations. The arrangement of scenery in penjing should have both hiding and revealing, with clear visibility and concealment; not only should the distant and near layers be clear, but the interest should also be endless; if more is hidden than revealed, the interest becomes even stronger.

   Hidden scenery requires not only that there be hiding and revealing on the plane, but also that in three-dimensional space there should be one layer above another, and within one layer still another layer. Streams winding, caves twisting, roads appearing and disappearing, mountain ridges veiled and reflecting one another; when the depth of scene is great and the meaning rich, the artistic effect is raised. In Chinese painting, “distant scenery wrapped in mist, deep cliffs locked in clouds” means using mist and clouds to hide scenery. Nowadays some rockeries use sprayed water mist to replace mist and clouds, and have lingering qin music; added to these are bamboo and trees on the rocks, sailboats, bridges, and pavilions, mutually veiling and reflecting one another to become hidden scenery, and then the artistic conception becomes profound.

  Third, use specific scenery to arouse people's associations. This is the technique of expanding the artistic conception to achieve the effect of seeing the large within the small. For example, in the Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou there is the "Pavilion for Listening to Rain," which uses banana leaves as a scenic accent and pairs them with grotesque rocks, making people feel as if they were in the scene. In addition, penjing also use flying waterfalls to express mountains beyond mountains and scenery beyond the pot, and use water surfaces to express the artistic conception of vast rivers and skies.

  In short, although penjing are small, as long as the techniques are ingenious and the layout is appropriate, one can achieve the artistic effect of a peak of three cun standing as high as a thousand ren, and a pot extending a foot or so embodying a hundred-li winding journey.