PREFACE
The bonsai art work is the only thing I have been focusing on in all my life time, and it remains the same.
Like all the youngsters, I had lots of dreams when I was a teenager and once I thought I should be a vocalist in the future, which related to my first job as a short-term musical teacher, and even had some music works published at Shanghai Musical Broadcast Anthology.And I still remember that I used to stand on the top of the mast of a boat, trying to conduct the symphony of turbulent waves. What a heroic scene and dream! But this dream did not come true due to historical reasons.
By occasion or by fate, I got in touch with bonsai and started my real career and life, and moreover, it has been lasting for more than half a decade till now during which I have been working and enjoying the study and creation of bonsai. And I do accept that this is the best arrangement of my life, which brings me joy and fruit. I would like to express my thanks to my uncle Mr. Wang Yiping, who provided me a chance to work as an art designer in Wenzhou Afforestation Bureau — which linked me with bonsai. And I am also very grateful to all the management teams in all these years who always made the effort to provide me with a peaceful platform for the creation and work, kept me away from all the fights and argues, so that I could be always concentrating on my art works to fulfill my bonsai duty and mission.
I had been working in two different bonsai gardens in Wenzhou Afforestation Bureau for over 30 years, and have been continuing the bonsai creation in my roof top garden after I got retired. As a summary, I collected most of the important works throughout my life here and for your easier reading, I classified them into the following 3 collections, and I hope this would help the understanding of the progress of China bonsai art and also my personal art track.
Episode One - Fly with New Wing
Works of Early Days (1959 - 1986)
I had been working in Wenzhou Miaoguosi Bonsai Garden for over 20 years in this period, and under the tutoring of Mr. Xiang Yanshu for the first ten years. I started to work and create independently. Though there was still a step away from personal styles, many works at this stage were well received.
Episode Two - Soar to Sky Line
Works of Mid Age (1987 - 1994)
Wenzhou Afforestation Bureau set a bonsai garden in the famous tourist area Jiangxin Isle, and I moved there to work in this bonsai garden till my retirement.These years saw my peak art creation and I launched the famous bonsai creation theory — Higher Truck with Collaboration Unit for source material treatment for pinus parviflora bonsai. There are many well-known works accepted nationally and internationally during this period, but some of them have been shaped from the early days since bonsai works take a long time to be cultivated and shaped.
Episode Three - March with Melody
Recent Works (1994 - nowadays)
Retirement was another benchmark for my bonsai life and I restarted with a new state of mind. Based on my working experiences and research effort, I brought forth many new concepts of shaping and composition method for pine bonsai, among which, “Higher Trunk with Lower Hanging Stretching Branches” was the most influential one for the bonsai world. And this was regarded as the most iconic format of China pine bonsai shaping character.
This book contains mainly the pictures of my bonsai works, and most of the pictures were taken by myself all along these years. Obviously, they were limited by many sectors such as background, weather, lighting, mechanic conditions by then, as well as my personal photographing technics — hope the imperfectness would be accepted by all the readers. And I did select some pictures taken by other people, each of which I marked to respect these nice people.
I made the following efforts aiming to make this book rich and vivid:
1. I inserted some articles by different authors published in different magazines and newspapers or web links relating to some of my bonsai works, providing readers with some different ways of reading and understanding my bonsai works from different aspects and angles — they were all inserted after the related bonsai pictures in different sections, and I marked all the authors and the publishers.
2. I put, by the end of this book, the most remarkable three articles that have influenced the development of Chinese bonsai art: Discussion Regarding Tradition, Further Discussion Regarding Tradition, Each Place Has Its Stream for Bonsai Cultivation —
Discussion Regarding Pine Bonsai's Shaping Format: Higher Trunk with Lower Stretching Branches.
I do assume that all the readers would excuse some of the minus mistakes (if there are any) in this book as I am really an aged person of 83, and I did my utmost to complete this book as a summary of my art life and to express my thanks to all those who have been expecting this book. Hope you would love this book and keep it to accompany you.
Hu Leguo
Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
November 2017