Bonsai is the scene in a bonsai. The scenery is big, and the pot is small, and the place that can be seen and played with is between the big and the small.
It is no accident that bonsai flourished in the Qing Dynasty.
An ancient civilization has reached its extreme, where everything is exquisite, complex and ingenious.
Therefore, in the Qing Dynasty, there were bonsai and snuff bottles, all of which were extremely hard in small places, trying to accommodate all things in heaven and earth in the narrow square inches.
This is certainly an astonishing achievement, but it also reveals a message of the times.
After all, one pot can't fit seven continents, and one pot can't fit four oceans.
In the living room of modern people, it is rare to see bonsai.
Most of the people of our time have lost the leisure and mood to serve such delicate things, and bonsai is not suitable for placing in the interior of high-rise buildings.
The most suitable place to place bonsai is the Jiangnan garden, which is separated by layers of barriers and shaded places.
There is a bonsai on the desk, echoing the strange stones and bamboos outside the window, and the people at this time are not so much on the couch by the desk, but between heaven and earth.
Therefore, the garden in the south of the Yangtze River is a big bonsai, and the people in the bonsai are the gentlemen who wander among the gardens.
The elegance is gone, and the spirit of gardens and bonsai has dissipated.
An art must have its time, society, and institutional soil and background.
The prosperity of bonsai is related to a world view, to a way of life, to the style of living room architecture, and to the existence or disappearance of a certain class or stratum.
Source: Visual China
Now it seems that bonsai probably can't go back to the past, let alone the Qing Dynasty, but it is still alive, abruptly placed in this era full of hustle and bustle of steel, plastic and glass, and has become a rare cultural memory.
Interestingly, even in our time, even in our homes, there is another kind of "bonsai".
That is the TV or the computer, they are also small in themselves, in the square inch, to see the existence of the heaven and the earth.
Nowadays, we can't do without our own "bonsai", because we have all become characters in this modern "bonsai".
Source: Visual China
Author: Yu Yue. From Reader Magazine, Issue 9, 2024. Those shining days, there are "Readers" to witness with you.