Bonsai Craftsmanship

01 · Historical Records

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 · Core Techniques & Process

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.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Penjing is mainly divided into two broad categories: landscape style and stump-and-trunk style.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The Yang School Penjing Museum in Yangzhou holds a group of Yangzhou penjing that have survived from ancient times; these plants, having undergone hundreds of years of change, still retain their original vitality, providing firsthand material for research on Yangzhou’s history and culture. Zhao Qingquan (recorded in the official files of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in January 1949, from Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. Representative inheritor of Penjing Technique (Yang School Penjing Technique), a third-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project. Senior engineer. He took Professor Xu Xiaobai as his master, studying aesthetics, literature, horticulture, and other knowledge related to penjing, and traveled to famous mountains and great rivers, visiting elderly penjing artists in various places. His penjing works integrate poetry, calligraphy, painting, and technique; they are fresh and natural, with a distinctly lyrical quality. He excels at the natural style of penjing modeling. The penjing of different styles that he creates take nature as their teacher, draw on the strengths of many schools, are not bound by established conventions, and are made according to the material at hand. His works use a wide range of tree species, with delicate technique and vivid composition. He has attended the World Bonsai Convention many times, lectured and performed abroad, and some of his demonstration penjing works are collected by museums and botanical gardens. He has published more than ten monographs on penjing, and his penjing works have been selected for domestic and international exhibitions many times and have won awards.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Zhao Qingquan 03-1301
• Cao Jide 05-2701
• Zhu Zhenqing 05-2702
• Hong Guanqing 05-2703
• Shen Baiping
• Wang Rusheng

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Bonsai Craftsmanship (Yangzhou, Jiangsu) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Zhao Qingquan · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗