Cao Jide

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Cao Jide, Male, Han, from Taizhou, Jiangsu, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Bonsai Craftsmanship (Ⅶ-94). The tradition is documented in Taizhou, Jiangsu. Within the regional tradition and school record of Bonsai Craftsmanship in Taizhou, Jiangsu: Penjing is mainly divided into two broad categories: landscape style and stump-and-trunk style. Penjing (tray scenery) originated from ornamental plants; as early as the Shang and Zhou dynasties there was already the custom of appreciating famous trees and flowers. Penjing with stones arranged to form mountains had already appeared in the Han dynasty, for which considerable evidence can be found in Han tomb murals. By the Tang dynasty, penjing had become a furnishing in wealthy households, a situation reflected in many murals and silk paintings of the time. The Yang School penjing technique transmitted in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, is an extremely important component of Chinese penjing art. It took shape in the Ming dynasty, matured in the Qing dynasty, and enjoys renown in the present day, almost in step with the entire history of Chinese penjing. Yang School penjing takes trees as its principal material; through careful cultivation and artistic treatment, it shapes within a pot a beauty that derives from nature yet surpasses it. The pruning-and-binding method of “three bends per inch” remains to this day a technique unique to Yang School penjing. Taizhou penjing also belongs to the Yang School and has a very long history. The Six Dynasties pine of Songlin’an, which can be verified in historical records, was a large-scale penjing of unusual tree form that appeared in the Six Dynasties period. The Taizhou Penjing Garden still maintains an ancient cypress penjing from the Chongzhen era of the Ming dynasty named Guo Ziyi Bringing His Sons to Court, which has high historical, cultural, and craft research value. In the early years of the Republic of China, Taizhou penjing artists such as Wang Ziyi made a living by selling and pruning-and-binding penjing, and were quite famous in the Taizhou area. In the 1950s, Wang’s descendants, in the course of going to mountainous areas to collect stump material for penjing, summarized the traditional modeling techniques of Taizhou penjing and developed them further.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, of the Han ethnic group, born in January 1958 in Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province. He is a representative bearer of bonsai craftsmanship (Yangzhou-school bonsai craftsmanship), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He is a senior technician. From 1979 he studied bonsai pruning and binding under Wang Shoushan, a master of Yangzhou-school bonsai art, and is the sixth-generation inheritor of Taizhou (Yangzhou-school) bonsai craftsmanship. He studied assiduously and has a solid grounding; he has a thorough command of the nine palm-fibre binding methods of Yangzhou-school bonsai pruning and binding and applies them with ease. He is devoted to theoretical research on Yangzhou-school bonsai and has published works including The Distinctive Features of Yangzhou-School Taizhou Bonsai in Form and Technique. After retiring he founded the Taiyun Tang bonsai studio, where he carries out public-benefit activities to transmit Yangzhou-school bonsai craftsmanship and takes on apprentices. Within the documented technical tradition of Bonsai Craftsmanship in Taizhou, Jiangsu: Penjing technique is a traditional means of artificial scenery arrangement: plants, strange stones, and the like are planted and arranged in a basin and, through artistic processing, made into a furnishing that condenses natural beauty. The penjing production technique combines numerous craft skills such as horticulture, the appreciation of strange and beautiful stones, and sculptural modeling, becoming an artistic creation that derives from nature yet surpasses it. Since the Wei and Jin dynasties, penjing production had developed considerably. After the Qing dynasty was established, the traditional art of penjing developed substantially and entered a flourishing period. Landscape-style penjing arranges strange and beautiful stones from nature in a basin through techniques such as sawing, carving, corroding, gluing, and joining, adorned with miniature pavilions and towers, small bridges, farmhouses, boats and carriages, pedestrians, and straw-caped fishermen made of materials such as ceramics, and accompanied by pond water, plants, and moss, so that the peaks rise in layered beauty with undulating variety, suggesting a thousand miles within the space of a foot and revealing a profound artistic conception. Stump-and-trunk-style penjing plants woody plants in a basin and tends and manages them over a long period, using processes such as pruning, binding, and fertilizing together with various artistic means to form beautiful and unusual plant shapes, so that the trunks are vigorous and strong, the branches and leaves lush and green, with a distinctive aesthetic appeal. Chinese penjing production technique is concentrated in Suzhou and Yangzhou in Jiangsu and in Anhui, Guangdong, and other places; although the artistic styles differ, in general they all achieve greatness within smallness, alternate emptiness and fullness, lay equal stress on artistic treatment and the pursuit of natural character, and oppose excessive carving and ornamentation. The quiet and elegant Yang School penjing both benefits from Yangzhou culture and is an indispensable part of it. Yang School penjing integrates poetry, calligraphy, painting, and technique, and can be called the representative of Chinese penjing art. Its forms are exquisite, its conception deep, and it is richly decorative: dignified and grand, elegantly classical yet lively and graceful; its layering is clear, its workmanship steady and precise, without losing plain naturalness. It is a perfect combination of technique and culture. Yangzhou penjing embodies the artistic taste and life insights of its creators, reflecting the aesthetic ideas and collective consciousness of a given period. Taizhou, located in central Jiangsu on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, has a subtropical humid climate that is conducive to penjing pruning and binding. In the selection of penjing materials, the design concept of “forest-and-mountain air” was proposed, and in the layout of branch clusters the compositional method of the “cloud-slice style” was put forward. These overarching insights brought Taizhou penjing to a new artistic height. As an important branch of Yang School penjing technique, Taizhou penjing technique has very distinct craft characteristics and is an important reference for studying the history and culture of Jiangsu. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The spirit of mountain forest": Taizhou bonsai selects material for the spirit of mountain forest and composes foliage in cloud tiers, giving it its own place within the Yangzhou school. "The Six Dynasties pine of Songlin Nunnery": The remarkable large pine of Songlin Nunnery is documented evidence that Taizhou bonsai reaches back to the Six Dynasties. "Wang Ziyi and his descendants": Wang Ziyi made his living selling and training bonsai in the early Republic, and in the 1950s his descendants systematised the school's techniques. "Humid subtropical climate and training": Taizhou's humid subtropical climate lengthens the growing season so that shoots heal quickly and can be cut and bound repeatedly.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

At the Eighth China Bonsai Exhibition held by the Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture in 2012, his work Coiled Dragon Encircling the Clouds won a gold award, while Unyielding Spirit Reaching the Clouds and Cloud Layers over High Mountains won silver awards.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Cao Jide · National Representative Bearer Archive