Bonsai (盆栽) or Penjing (盆景)?

Bonsai (盆栽) or Penjing (盆景)?

by the Barefeet Duke (赤足公爵)

In Chinese, “pen盆” means “pot” (sometime misinterpreted as “tray”) and “jing 景” means “scenery." There are two types of penjing, namely landscape penjing and tree penjing. Trees, rocks, figurines, boats, animals, birds, pagodas, house, bridges, etc. are used in landscape penjing, with rocks playing the prominent ro1e. Although ornaments are found in some tree penjing and not in bonsai, I think it will be misleading to define penjing as “pot plants with landscape completed with tree, rocks, people, boats, animals, birds, and pagodas." For example, only five out of the 31 penjing donated by Dr. wu and Mr. Lui have ornaments.

My understanding is that ornaments are used OCCASIONALLy in tree penjing to complete what the artist intends to depict, be it a scene, a mood or one's personal philosophy. For example, I have a juniper hanging down from “the cliff”. I added a small boat to this penjing because I chose the verse “As thousands of mountains greet the light boat along the way” (輕舟已過萬重山) from the famous Zen poem by Li Bai to go with this penjing. In yet another case, I even wrapped a dead wine around my Serissa to complete the verse “dead wine, o1d tree, napping crow (for viewer's imagination)”(枯藤老樹昏鴉) that I borrowed from another poet. Writing poems or selecting poems from famous poets to go with penjing is another unique feature of penjing. Most of the penjing featured in Dr. Wu's book, Man Lung Artistic Pot Plants, have his poems. For example, on page 195 he wrote “ As powerful as a swimming dragon” (矯若游龍)for the black pine he donated to the National Arboretum. This penjing was selected as the model for designing the logo for the Penjing Museum at the National Arboretum.

Chinese characters are often used in the written Japanese and are called “kanji”. The two kanji for the Japanese Emperor's name ‘Akihito’ are 明(Aki) 仁 (Hito). However, the same Chinese character does not always have the same meaning to both the Chinese and the Japanese. For example, the Japanese call a train (not the modern electrical train) "汽車 kishia”  a steam vehicle, because there is steam coming out of the locomotive. But the Chinese call the train “火車 huoche”  a fire vehicle, because they see coal burning inside the locomotive. Interestingly, to the Chinese, the two kanji “汽車" (pronounced “chiche” in Mandarin) means automobiles not trains. Evidently, the Chinese have the same problem with the Japanese term “bonsai”. The two Chinese characters (i.e. kanji) for bonsai are “盆” and “栽". However, to the Chinese "盆栽” (pronounced “penzai" in Mandarin) simply means any potted plants with no artistic design. Therefore, most Chinese prefer to use the term "penjing” for both the tree and the landscape penjing, while some will use ”bonsai” solely for tree penjing.

There are five major schools of tree penjing in China, namely Lingnan, Shanghai, Sichuan, Suzhou, and Yanqzhou, each with its regional characteristics. Although there are physical, regional, artistic, and philosophical differences between tree penjing and bonsai (and even between different schools of penjing), I believe that they all create the tranquility and serenity of an old tree or a forest. Just as the tree penjing developed into bonsai in Japan, I hope the bonsai in the United States will eventually evolve into its unique style and become the AMERICAN bonsai.

  I thank Miss Karin Albert, Mr. Tom Geeyeen Chan, and Mr. David W. Fukumoto for their comments on this article.

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Original version appeared in Potomac Bonsai Association NEWSLETTER vol. 19, no. 7, 1989.