Shen began his bonsai series in 2007. He created these bonsai by using wires, pulleys, cages, and other tools to make them appear tortured. He did this as a commentary on the brutality with which humans control their environment. It was also a commentary on how humans control each other, as a boss controls an employee and a parent or school controls a child. As Michael Young points out, the wires and pulleys on Shen's plants are “implements of torture and the props on which the organism depends to survive.”