Penjing: the Chinese Art of Bonsai

Zhao Qingquan (1949-), a native of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, is a master of the Chinese art of penjing, a Senior Landscape Engineer, an International Bonsai Instructor at Bonsai Clubs International, and an International Consultant for the World Bonsai Friendship Federation. He is currently on the staff of the Penjing Museum of the Slender West Lake Garden. Zhao’s passion for penjing began early under the influence of his family. He later received training under Professor Xu Xiaobai, a renowned expert on penjing. In his four-decade-long career creating and studying penjing, Zhao Qingquan focused on the fusion of traditional Chinese culture and contemporary aesthetic sensibilities. In the 1970s, he pioneered a new form of penjing–the water-and-land penjing, by grouping such design elements as plants, rocks and water, in a merge of traditional tree penjing and rock penjing. Its unique aesthetic style is reminiscent of classic Chinese literati paintings.

An internationally acclaimed penjing master, Zhao has attended world penjing conferences several times and given Chinese penjing lectures and demonstrations in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. In 2001, his penjing Trident Maples was added to the collection of the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum of the US National Arboretum. In 2009, he received the Promoting Bonsai Throughout the World Award at the World Bonsai Convention in Puerto Rico.

Zhao’s more than ten monographs include An Analysis of the Art of Composition of Chinese Penjing, Penjing: Worlds of Wonderment (in English), and Zhao Qingquan’s Penjing Art.