Penjing, the hobby of creating a miniature landscape, is an art that bears close ties with the arts of bonsai, saikei and bonkei - ways of displaying the harmony of form, shape and scale of nature in miniature. Penjing is a predominantly Chinese practice. Pot plants with landscape number among the popular pastimes of the Chinese people. The landscape may consist of artificial rock work or woodwork or it may consist of one single piece of natural rock or wood. Miniature rock gardens also contain pavilions and terraces, trees and flowers, sailing boats, people, birds and animals, all very much reduced in size but nevertheless life-like, presenting vivid figures more real than those on landscape paintings. Rock-gardening is a Chinese art. After the Second World War, it has also become rather popular in Japan. But the rocks and stones there which may be used as raw material are much below those produced in China, both as to quantity and variety. This accounts for the fact that pot plants with miniature rock landscape are not as popular as dwarfed trees (Bonsai) in Japan.

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Bonsai courtesy of Man Lung Penjing

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