Guo Xiaobin, producer of Bishan bonsai: obsessed with bonsai production and inheriting traditional art

Guo Xiaobin is pruning bonsai, photo taken by correspondent Zhang Xiaohan

06:30, May 11 (correspondent Zhang Xiaohan) in a bonsai store with only a few dozen square meters in Yitianmen Farmers' Market, bonsai large and small are displayed on the table and on the floor. Golden marbles, Luo Han Song, Huang Yang, Begonia …... Dozens of categories, each basin is different, original, dazzling, really good-looking. It was Guo Xiaobin, the owner of the store, who created them, who has been obsessed with bonsai production for more than a decade.

Recently, when I came to the bonsai store to meet Guo Xiaobin, she was immersed in the production of a bonsai with golden marbles. She sometimes stared at the bonsai idea, sketched it on white paper, and sometimes picked up scissors to trim it. She told me: "making bonsai is like creating a work of art. It seems to be trimmed at will, but it is actually quite fastidious. The most important thing is to master 'hierarchy' and 'thought'."

Guo Xiaobin is 50 years old. in addition to running a bonsai shop, she also has a nursery garden of more than 10 acres in Riverside Town, planting all kinds of flower seedlings and bonsai tree stumps. She told me that when she was a child, under the leadership of her parents, she went to the city to see a bonsai exhibition, and she was deeply attracted by those strangely shaped plants at the exhibition site, and got out of control ever since. When she grew up, she took fiddling with bonsai as her career.

For more than a decade, Guo Xiaobin devoted herself to making bonsai. For this reason, she often braved hardships and went up the mountain in search of treasure. Every time she found the desired tree stump, she would feel like a treasure and carefully "escort" home. Bonsai is a plastic art, so the choice of pile materials is very important. Excellent piles can create excellent works of art. " Guo Xiaobin said that in the production of bonsai, its cultivation, repair, and shaping test the producer's concentration and accomplishment, from observation and conception, thinning and management, climbing branch modeling, conservation and fertilization to stage shaping, and it will take at least three to five years to complete. Bonsai is just beginning to take shape.

After more than 10 years of study and exploration, Guo Xiaobin has accumulated profound experience in bonsai cultivation, and she has gradually grown from a layman to a master of bonsai production recognized by insiders, and has influenced a large number of people to become bonsai lovers. When the weather is fine, her bonsai store will welcome groups of enthusiasts who visit bonsai and learn how to make it. Guo Xiaobin always patiently explains the essentials of conservation and leads everyone to observe the pruning skills, because she is unreserved. but when beginners encounter problems, they will think of looking for her, and some even directly move their own bonsai to reshape her.

"it's very difficult to make bonsai. You have to bear hardships and stand hard work, and what's more, you have to keep learning to improve the aesthetics of bonsai. But no matter how much time and energy it takes, I will continue to do it." Guo Xiaobin said that as a bonsai man, he has an obligation to carry forward and inherit this traditional art.