Miniature can accumulate size. It is vast in its way.
Gaston Bachelard
To be able, in the space of one square foot, to evoke a landscape of ten thousand leagues!
Du Fu (712-770)
Xiezi jing, or tiny scenery, was advocated in the Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368). The monk Yun Shangren, who enjoyed traveling from place to place throughout his life, created penjing to “see the big from the tiny.” This practice became an important guiding principle in penjing design in the following centuries. Ding Henian, a Chinese poet of Hui ethnicity in the late Yuan Dynasty, said in one of his poems about a penjing created by Yun Shangren; in a pot with trees, rocks and water he imagined the vast Bohai Sea and towering Kongtong Mountains.
Zhao Qingquan, Penjing: The Chinese Art of Bonsai