Pottery blocks excavated from the Yuyao Hemudu Cultural Site in Zhejiang
Part of the "Listening to the Qintu" (Northern Song Dynasty) Zhao Tuo
Tang Sancai landscape stones excavated from Tang tombs in the western suburbs of Xi'an
Bonsai art is an important part of traditional Chinese culture, and its variety and long history. The Yuyao Hemudu Cultural Site in Zhejiang Province once unearthed 7,000-year-old five-leaf and three-leaf pattern pottery blocks, which are depicted with images of potted plants, and there are also square clay pots and circular double-hole pottery pots. This proves that as early as the beginning of the agricultural civilization, either for sacrifice or entertainment, potted plants have appeared in human society.
In the Qin and Han dynasties to the Wei and Jin dynasties, the ancients began to use shallow basins to place mountain stones, so that the mountain stones formed the concept of "scenery" in the basin, and the rise of Taoist culture and the ideological concept of literati doctors to send love to landscapes also promoted the formation of bonsai. According to the "Three Auxiliary Yellow Maps", there was a greenhouse hall in the Weiyang Palace of the Western Han Dynasty, and potted flowers and trees could be displayed in the hall in winter. The Eastern Jin Dynasty Saint Wang Xizhi also planted potted lotus flowers with his own hands and recorded it in the "Cambodian Shutang Post": "... At this age, we have planted several pots of thousand leaves, and they have also flowered, one after another, and now they have opened more than twenty branches, which is quite impressive..."
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the variety of ornamental flowers and trees increased, the cultivation techniques of flowers and trees continued to improve, and people made bonsai by pruning and climbing. At this stage, the bonsai plants are mainly pines, and Lan Hui began to match with mountain stones to form different water and drought landscapes. Wang Wei, a famous poet and painter of the Sheng Tang Dynasty, once used Lan Hui and Strange Stones to make bonsai, and Feng Yan mentioned this matter in the "Miscellaneous Records of Yunxian", saying, "Wang Wei stored Lan Hui with a yellow magnetic bucket, raised With Qi Stones, and lived for many years." During this period, a large number of poems about potted plants were handed down, such as Li He's "Five Small Pine Songs" with a bonsai title, in which it is written: "Snakes, snakes, snakes, sun scales, snakes Green waves soak the leaves full of thick light, thin beams of dragon hair reaming knife scissors. The master wall is paved with state maps, and there are many vulgar confucians in front of the master hall. Moon understands the teardrops of autumn, stalagmites Brook Yun ken send books. ”
The Song Dynasty, the heyday of Han culture, was also the mature period of Chinese bonsai art. At that time, there was already a mature climbing and pruning modeling technology, and the variety of plants used for bonsai increased, and flowers and fruits, herbs and bamboo appeared, and the shape of the pots used was more diverse and beautiful. Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty was good at the art of calligraphy and painting, leaving behind paintings depicting bonsai such as "Listening to the QinTu". And the real proposed the word "bonsai" is the Well-known Su Dongpo, he also loves bonsai, often make his own hands, and leave a lot of rhetoric notes, such as he wrote in the "Rough Talk of Grid Things": "Basho first hair seed, with oil hairpin across its roots and eyes, it does not grow, can be used as a bonsai." "By the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, the capital city of Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang) already had gardens specializing in bonsai making. The book "Mengliang Record" written by Wu Zimu of the Southern Song Dynasty has a record: "The water bridge outside the Qiantang Gate, the gardens of the East and West Horse Ponds, all planted with strange pines and exotic junipers, exquisite trees, mostly in the form of dragons and phoenixes dancing birds and beasts, the daily city is in the capital, and good people buy more for viewing..."
The Yuan Dynasty was the mature period of literati painting, and also affected the development of literati bonsai, which was called "some sub-scenery". In the Ming Dynasty, bonsai theory works such as Gao Lian's "Gaozi Bonsai Theory" appeared, and bonsai knowledge went to systematization and theorization.
The mass production of purple sand pots in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties and Shiwan basins in Guangdong marked the arrival of a period of great development and popularization of bonsai in China. In the Qing Dynasty, the commercial production and sale of bonsai appeared. In Li Dou's "Yangzhou Painting Record", it is mentioned: "There is a monk of Suzhou who is famous and illusory, good at making bonsai, often worth as much as a pot of hundreds of gold, so everyone has imitated it. "The commodity value of bonsai has promoted the development of commercialized production of bonsai, so regional genres have also emerged. The paintings of the garden theme in this period show us the different styles and artistic conceptions of bonsai.
In the more than 100 years since the Opium War, foreign invasions and years of war, China began to degenerate into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and bonsai art entered a downturn. After the founding of New China, the urban garden departments of all regions of the country successively established state-owned bonsai gardens, collecting the best works of bonsai that were idle at that time, and displaying them in the bonsai gardens for the public to observe. Since the early 1980s, with the rapid development of China's social economy, bonsai, a traditional culture and art with a long history, has begun to move towards rejuvenation, which not only beautifies people's lives and meets people's growing spiritual and cultural needs, but also becomes a modern green cultural industry. Nowadays, the exhibitions, academic seminars, and bonsai professional training activities held at all levels throughout the country have emerged in an endless stream, which has greatly promoted the improvement of bonsai art, which originated in China, and the ancient art of Chinese bonsai will develop more brilliantly in the future.
(Information: Yu Yuanyuan, Xu Xinyi)
Source: Guangming Daily