A bonsai is like a miniature 3D version of a landscape painting

  Placed at home, the thing with the greatest health-promoting effect is not fresh flowers or green plants, but bonsai. Because the most important role of health preservation is to please the eyes and delight the mood. Statistics show that among all kinds of professions in China, painters and calligraphers have the longest average lifespan, already exceeding 90 years, and most of these painters and calligraphers paint landscape paintings, while a bonsai is the “miniature 3D” version of a landscape painting.

  When we look at a good landscape painting, we feel intoxicated by it, both body and mind delighted. Research by Professor Chen Xiaoye of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences shows that the nature expressed in landscape paintings is the most health-promoting, and it can be encapsulated through bonsai. What is good for health preservation is certainly a good ecology; the foundation of a good ecology is land and water, and mountains are three-dimensional, so their ecosystem is more complete. That is why the paintings we find so mood-delighting all contain “mountains” and “water”.

  The reason ordinary green plants and fresh flowers are less health-promoting than bonsai is that they can only create a very small ecosystem. The Chinese gardens we love to visit, or famous landscape paintings, all take trees as their main subject. In this sense, Chinese painting is art, and even more a health-preserving art, because it conforms to and fulfills the instinctive needs of life.

  The reason landscape paintings and gardens can intoxicate people is that they contain a very high amount of information. This includes the stones that Chinese people love, which are sought after for being “thin, leaky, and transparent”, because stones that are “thin, leaky, and transparent” have a much larger surface area than solid stones of the same volume, and can carry more information. When a person looks at them specifically, they feel endlessly varied and wonderful, and are intoxicated by this wonderfulness.

  A large amount of information is condensed into the space, and an old pine tree, a deliberately aged pavilion, also carry historical information, which adds information from the dimension of time as well. Though a bonsai is small, the world it expresses is vast.

  This is also why, in the past, literati would do their utmost to realize their dreams of mountains and water whenever possible. No matter how small the space at home, they would still build a garden, and at the very least they would use words to build a garden. And the bonsai we place at home is also a remedy for when we cannot personally visit famous mountains and great rivers.

  The benefits of placing bonsai indoors:

  With a bonsai indoors, when you are tired, looking at something green can relieve fatigue and also give your eyes a good rest;

  The ornamental value of indoor bonsai is far greater than that of ordinary potted plants, and at the same time it has a great deal to do with giving people a pleasant mood;

  Although indoor bonsai occupy a very small share of our lives, there are many people who love bonsai;

  Indoor bonsai is also unique in culture, an abbreviation of scenery, called a living Chinese painting;

  Indoor bonsai enthusiasts can, according to the scenery they like, bring beautiful rivers and mountains into their own rooms;

  Indoor bonsai can absorb dust from the air, purify the air, absorb carbon dioxide, and release oxygen for people to breathe, as everyone knows;

  Indoor bonsai can make the indoor greenery feel very strong; generally there is nothing green, and it makes the spirit flourish.

  Indoor bonsai has the effect of protecting and improving the ecological environment. It can reduce carbon and increase oxygen, keep the air fresh, and has a soundproofing and noise-reducing effect.

  Indoor bonsai promotes human health. It has the effect of beautifying the environment.

  Indoor bonsai lets you feel the beauty of nature indoors.