Human wisdom, bonsai art

In the Shanghai Botanical Garden, there are not only peonies, roses and other flowering and fruiting plants, but also bamboo forests and so on for citizens to relax and stroll in the park. There are also orchid rooms, bonsai gardens, and greenhouses with tropical plants for the public to appreciate at a charge. Bonsai, one of China's traditional arts using materials such as mountains, plants, and water, is created by artists and horticulturists to concentrate the scenery of nature in a pot, express feelings through scenery, achieve the artistic effect of shrinking dragons into inches and seeing the big in the small, and show typical natural scenery. Bonsai generally consists of two major categories: stump bonsai and landscape bonsai, composed of three basic elements: scenery, pot, and child (rack), which are organically linked together to form a three-dimensional, miniature landscape. People praise bonsai as a 'three-dimensional painting' and 'silent poetry'. The history of Chinese bonsai, as early as the Han and Jin dynasties, the prevalence of Buddhist and Laozi's world-renouncing thoughts, the yearning for a natural and secluded life, is the basis for the emergence of bonsai. Since the Tang Dynasty, a large number of unearthed cultural relics and poetry documents have shown the formation of bonsai. In the Bonsai Art Museum in the Bonsai Garden of the Shanghai Botanical Garden, there is a picture vividly depicting the objects held in both hands by the maids on the east wall of the corridor of the tomb of Prince Zhang Huai Li Xian of the Tang Dynasty (706 AD) excavated in Qianling, Shaanxi in 1972. The picture shows the situation of tribute to the mountains and stones: the exquisite and transparent mountains and stones are placed in a shallow pot, which is called the first creation of bonsai. The landscape paintings depicting natural scenery reached a creative peak in the Song Dynasty, promoting the development of bonsai art. In the court and among the people, the art of bonsai had entered a mature period at that time. In 2016, the Shanghai Botanical Garden completely renovated the Bonsai Garden, preserving the good spatial layout of the Bonsai Garden, the classic garden gate, and precious bonsai. The Bonsai Garden has rebuilt the Shanghai Bonsai Art Museum, Bonsai Exhibition Hall, and International Bonsai Art Exchange Center, and renovated Longhua Garden, Four Seasons Garden, Qunfang Garden, Huicui Garden, and Lingpu Garden, enhancing the overall garden art level of the Bonsai Garden. The Bonsai Garden has become a beautiful Jiangnan courtyard garden with poetic and picturesque, landscape charm, Shanghai style, and exquisite beauty.