How to shape a cliff cypress (Sabina chinensis) bonsai? A detailed guide to practical techniques

  Tip pinching and shari are important techniques that must be mastered when making cliff cypress bonsai. Tip pinching is actually leaf pinching. Because the young branches of the cliff cypress grow from scale-like small leaves, removing the tender young branches and leaves can control excessive growth.

  At the same time, tip pinching is also the only choice for organising the crown form, standardising the tree's appearance, and keeping the landscape beautiful and clean. It is usually carried out on the basis of trunk chopping and branch cultivation, and works in conjunction with wiring.

  Shari and jin (deadwood branches), on the other hand, give the cliff cypress more meaning, and can fully display the towering, noble character that has endured countless trials in the baptism of nature, as well as the heroic spirit standing tall beneath the vast sky.

  Many cliff cypress bonsai stumps have dead tips on top, scars below, and decayed holes at the base; or the growth layer has been eaten dead over a large area, or the trunk has many cuts from knives and axes and the cut ends are too exposed. You can follow nature and use shari techniques to turn ugliness into strange beauty. Shari can be applied to parts that have already died and parts that can be allowed to die, and can also be applied to twisted yet beautifully spiralling trunk and branches, or carried out because of the need for contrast in line and colour.

  Bark stripping is best done in mid-spring, carving is best done in winter, and jin is best made by twisting. You must grasp the contrast between the dead and the living, and grasp the viewing side well. However, doing shari should start from actual conditions; the key is to examine the bonsai stump and see whether it is necessary and possible.

  Shari techniques must not be overused, otherwise you will spoil things by being too clever. In bonsai art there is no fixed method and no fixed style. Practitioners differ in cultivation and styles vary. Every single move depends on the author's inspiration; it is completed through inner impulse.

  In shaping cliff cypress bonsai, you should expand exchanges in practice, improve yourself, sum up experience well, and constantly innovate.