Page 17 - Ebook bonsai for beginner

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CHINA - From about the year 706 AD

comes the tomb paintings for Crown Prince

Zhang Huai, which included depictions of
two ladies offering miniature landscapes

with small plants in shallow dishes. By this
time these were the earliest written

descriptions of these pun wan – tray
playthings.

As the creation and care of these was aready somewhat advanced, the
maturation of the art had taken place (but its documentation has not yet
been discovered by the west).

The earliest collected and then containerized trees are believed to have
been peculiarly-shaped and twisted specimens from the wilds. These
were “sacred” as opposed to “profane” because the trees could not be
used for any practical, ordinary purposes such as lumber. Their

grotesque forms were reminiscent of yoga-type postures which
repeatedly bent-back on themselves, re-circulating vital fluids and said to
be the cause of long-life.
Over the centuries, different regional styles would be developed

throughout the large country with its many varied landscapes;
earthenware and ceramic containers would replace the porcelain ones
displayed on wooden stands; and attempts would be made to shape the
trees with bamboo frameworks or brass wire or lead strips. Many poets
and writers each made at least one description of tree and/or

mountainous miniature landscapes, and many painters included a
dwarfed potted tree as a symbol of a cultivated man’s lifestyle. After the
16th century these were called pun tsai or “tray planting.” The term pun
ching (“tray landscape,” now called penjing) didn’t actually come into
usage until the 17th century.