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Public Zone 公開區 => General Topics 綜合題目 => Topic started by: chin on 14 March 2009, 05:36:58
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I went to the show today (Friday the 13th) with the intention to take lots of pictures of flowers. But I ended up taking lots of pictures of Pen Jing (盆景 Miniature Scene on a Pot, or commonly known in English by the Japanese name Bonsai.)
This was my first time ever visited the show, and I was not well prepared. To take good flower pictures, I probably should have had my tripod, and pick a more sunny day.
Many of the Pen Jing below are between 2 to 4 feet tall. About a handfull are about as tall as a grown up man. All the trees and plants are living plants, with many lived through the shaping process that took decades!
Click on the picture to see a large version.
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Perhaps two feet talk, this Pen Jing could have taken 20+ years to shape.
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Beauty in deformation?
The tree trunk is shaped by twisting and tighting and cutting.
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Some of the beauties of Pen Jing is in the nice root formation. I was told that the root formation like this one is done by planting the tree in a deep pot, allowed the roots to go deep. Then move the tree to a shallow Pen Jing pot, and explose part of the root. The roots would be shaped using the same techniques that shape the trunk.
Even with the roots explosed like this, the tree will live on for decades. Pen Jing is a live time project.
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I forgot how two tree trunks like these can grow side-by-side. They looked very nice anyway.
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A typical deco at the base of a Pen Jing. Many of the Pen Jing depict hermit like life of scholars, or rustic village scenes.
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Another important technique of Pen Jing. The tree trunk and branches are cut repeatedly to maintain the height, while allow the base of the trunk to grow thick. Sometimes the trunk will be cut open, without killing the tree, to allow or encourage deformed growth.
Deformation may not be the appripriate description but I will use the word until I found a better word. Very often this deformation is to highlight the resilient and strong life force of the tree.
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Another important technique, which requires lots of patient, is to place a nice looking rock "within" the tree, such that the tree will grow around or hugging the rock to form the desired shape.
Just imagine how many years or months are required to have the tree grew around a rock! For a large size real life example, see my pictures from the trip to Angok Wat (http://chinman.com/index.php?topic=9.0). The process is essentially the same.
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One of my flavorites, and a larger one. This one shows another amazing technique of making the trees grow downward.
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Sort of matching the picture on the pot... :)
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One of the common theme is not to allow the branches to grow straight.
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More learned man in solitude.
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Another comman technique or them in Pen Jing - Forest from a Single Tree (獨木成林). The original tree trunk was bend down then grow the branches upward to form the "forest".
More example follows.
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Sort of 獨木成林
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The use of this type of special rocks (英石) to imitate limestone formation.
The two pictures were taken minutes apart but with two different camera lenses, and the color tones are different!
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This one the rock and the tree are not yet integrated. The tightup mark still on the rock.
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In the scene, the scholar is not reading by playing Gu Qin.
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This one has to be the most unusually Pen Jing. I have never seen any thing like this before.
This tree is quite big at perhaps 4 or 5 feet tall. It was originally one tree, but seems someone split the tree exactly in the middle, then each half moved away from the other half and continue to grow with some branches extending to the other side.
Three Chinese character "勒馬崖" was craved on the inside flat face of one half of the tree. The Chinese writing literally means the cliff where you have to hold back your horse. I think it's describing the sheer straight sharp drop of the cut.
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I put my wide angle lenses right under the tree to make the trees look very big and tall.
The second pictures shows very clear each of the "two" trees are actually half of the orginal.
My friend and I were discussion how this was done. Our speculation is that the tree was split on the top long time ago to allow the top to grow separately. Then the bottom is split and displaced a bit to create the space and effect. Just imagine the time and patience required!
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Another nice combination of tree and rock.
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This is a very unusually combination created from something very common.
This plant is very common in Hong Kong. It's a herbal plant that cures certain skin irratation with external application.
We see this plan almost everywhere in Hong Kong - a lot taller and bigger than this Pen Jing BUT the trunk not as thick. Perhaps it shows the time it took to shape this Pen Jing.
Also this is also the first time I see this plant used in Pen Jing.
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Is this a Banyan tree? Banyan tree is generally very big, but this one is perhaps 1.5 feet tall. The roots are grown very nicely.
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More rocks.
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Another rather amazing one. This is perhaps the largest Ben Jing I saw in this show.
And yes, the trees are real and alive.
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I think the first picture could easily be mistaken as a pictures taken in the forest of big trees.
But the actual size of the tree trunks are probably only 1 inch diameter. This is another fine example of growing a forest from one tree.
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Zhu Ge Liang?
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Too many horses, in my opinion.
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A wider view of the Pen Jing show.
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Now some flower pictures from the flower show.
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:)
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:)
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Maybe one day I will have a nice garden like this.
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:)
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While the photographers were taking pictures of flowers, I took pictures of them.
For the guys, size matters. See who's bigger, longer, and steadier.
And Ms Hong Kong was taking picture with an expensive Canon G10 digicam.
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My loot from the flower show... Baby shoots of pine tree 羅漢松, a few small clay pots, and a "pot" craved out from a rock.
After arriving home, then I realized that I do not have any planting soil at home. So I used the ADA Aqua Soil for underwater plants. The soil is slightly acidic, and in a larger lump than the general planting soil.
Let's hope baby trees survive the first month.