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. Huizhou School penjing is one of the main schools of Chinese penjing. It began in the Southern Song dynasty, flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and has a history of more than a thousand years to this day. It is named after Maihua Fishing Village in Shexian County, Anhui — an area belonging to ancient Huizhou, where it originated and is mainly transmitted.
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. Huizhou penjing technique skillfully employs the artistic methods of “a thousand miles within a foot”, “shrinking a dragon to an inch”, “greatness within smallness”, and “the artificial yet seemingly real”; the penjing produced are rarely alike. These works may have iron-hard stems and twisted branches, plain and vigorous; or coiling, interlocking roots with the force of a coiled dragon; or hang suspended upside down like a dragon exploring the sea; or stand tall and proud, steep and upright; or be pleasingly scattered with thick branch supports. They display the charm of dead wood with natural completeness. Other works have vigorous trunks and lush, dense crowns layered like clusters of clouds, with a fresh, bright spirit and burgeoning spring vitality, quite evoking the mood of “rising straight into the blue clouds”. The “roaming dragon” style plum stump is a representative work of Huizhou penjing; commonly known as “Huimei” (Huizhou plum), it takes neatness, symmetry, and solemnity as its main characteristics. Long famous throughout China, it has won great renown for Huizhou School penjing technique.
The coiling-dragon plum bonsai
The coiling-dragon plum is the emblem of Hui-school bonsai, prized for its symmetry, order and solemnity.
Three-tier and wild-trunk styles
The three-tier form is the classic pattern; the inheritor Hong Guanqing reworked it and developed the wild-trunk style into a modern naturalistic manner.
The Maihua Yucun nursery village
Rising in the Southern Song, the school takes its name from Maihua Yucun village in Shexian, where local plants and stones are pruned and trained in pots.
Iron trunks and hanging branches
Its works range from gnarled iron trunks to coiled roots and hanging, sea-seeking branches, drawing out the spirit of weathered wood.
Hong Guanqing's signature works
The fifth-batch inheritor Hong Guanqing, born in 1944 in Shexian into a bonsai family, is known for Spring Fills Xin'an, Hongling Two Reds and Stepping into the Blue Clouds.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Penjing is mainly divided into two broad categories: landscape style and stump-and-trunk style. Huizhou penjing technique mainly uses artistic treatments such as pruning, coiling, and composition to arrange locally distinctive plants, rocks, and other materials in basins and pots, giving them style characteristics that are either ancient and plain, natural, vigorous, or quiet and elegant. The Huizhou School penjing produced have clear distinctions between principal and subordinate elements, emptiness and fullness arising together, appropriate density, movement and stillness reflecting one another, concealment within exposure, hardness and softness in balance, contrast between decay and flourishing, and the complementary use of skill and simplicity, reaching a state in which both form and spirit are complete. They fully embody the breadth and depth of Huizhou culture and the ingenuity of the local people.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship · Bonsai Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Hong Guanqing (recorded in the official files of the associated inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in May 1944, from Shexian County, Anhui Province. Representative inheritor of Penjing Technique (Huizhou School Penjing Technique), a fifth-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage project. He comes from a family of Huizhou School penjing makers. The penjing he makes have rigorous structure, dynamic momentum, and appropriate density, seeking curves within straightness and calm within disorder, with a strong scholarly quality. He emphasizes innovation: breaking through the traditional styles of Huizhou School penjing, transforming the traditional three-tier style, developing the traditional miscellaneous-stump wild style, and creating a modern natural style of penjing with his own artistic individuality. His representative works include the plum penjing Spring Filling Xin’an and Two Reds of Hongling, and the five-needle pine penjing Rising Step by Step into the Blue Clouds. He has trained a large number of outstanding talents in Huizhou School penjing production.
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
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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