Penjing Bonsai

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Penjing or penzai is the ancient Chinese art of planting trees or plants and creating the illusion of the age of the plant. In general, Penjing or Penzaipenjing is divided into three categories based on the subject: penjing tree (shumu penjing), penjing scenery / landscape (Shanshui penjing), and water and soil penjing (shuihan penjing).

Japanese bonsai art originally came from penjing (bonsai is the Japanese pronunciation for penzai). Bonsai tend to have simpler forms (seem more “subtle”) and they are planted in pots with a simple shape or color.

Conversely, penjing are designed in various forms that seem “wild”, and can be planted in brightly colored pots or other more creative forms. Mini plant fans outside of Asia often blur the distinction between penjing and bonsai with the intent to explore the potential of plants and potted materials, free from traditional style and techniques.

In many classical Chinese gardens miniature plants and ornamental stones called penjing can be found. The trees are carefully trimmed and displayed with rocks as the embodiment of carving a living person or a poem in three dimensions. The composition of this art is to capture the spirit of nature, and distinguishes them from ordinary plants in pots.

Origin

A container called pen Yangshao culture comes from China’s Neolithic period and is a lower plate of clay and the bottom has legs. The body is then produced from bronze and is used for ceremonies at the palace and religious rituals during the Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty.

When foreign traders arrived in China to introduce aromatic plants in the 2nd century BC, Chinese people began to burn incense in a uniquely shaped bowl. The container is called boshanlu and is shaped like a cap with holes to allow the smoke from the incense to get out.
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Ornaments in the form of bonshanlu are often mythological figures or beasts in the mountains. Small pen containers are sometimes placed as a base boshanlu as a container for the rest of the incense when it is still hot.

The pen is sometimes filled with water to symbolize the ocean that became the location of the island / the holy mountain of Mount Penglai. Initially pens were made of bronze, ceramic, or stone-talk.

In subsequent periods, the pen-shaped stone used was unique, and occasionally some had a moss-covered surface to beautify the embodiment. Since the first century BC, Taoist mysticism taught mystical sites in miniature form to better focus and increase the appreciation of the objects in the form of truth.

The entry of Buddhism from India to China after the mid-2nd century AD, brought the teachings of the dhyana meditation sect which often wore the manuscript translation of Taoist terminology to describe non-physical concepts.

At the same time the Chinese also knew the art of flowers and decorative arts by decorating altars with flowers that later became one of the branches of art in China. Five centuries later, the Chan sect of Buddhism was formed from the combination of dhyana Buddhism and Taoism, the Chinese original.