Bamboo Culture

The so-called "bamboo culture" refers to the human society in the history of Staff, created by the bamboo-related material and spiritual wealth of the sum, in particular the spirit of wealth, such as the literary image of bamboo, bamboo related to the history and story, and so on, which is rich in culture. Bamboo in ancient China in the development of material civilization and spiritual civilization has a big role. As early as 5,000 years ago Yangshao culture of pottery emerged as the words engraved there, "Bamboo".

Using bamboo as the theme of our national culture and customs in some villages also is strong, such as civil "Zhu Ma lights" dance, known as "Zhu Ma to run." Buyi in Guizhou Panjiang between North and South, young men and women cut bamboo for the bride price, and during the Western Han Dynasty to the Warring States period, residents of Southwest Yelang States used bamboo for totem, such as the worship of the great bamboo. The performance of the worship for bamboo included the myths and legends of bamboo, bamboo for the clan or tribe or clan that mark, the activity of bamboo mimic, as well as the bamboo festival, and so on.

Bamboo to the title of the folk stories are the spot bamboo (also known as Xiangfei Bamboo), Mengzong bamboo (Phyllostachys) and so on ,and the legends such as broad-leaved Indocalamus, bamboo Seven Sages, Zhuxi literary and so on. The core of the lofty spirit of China's bamboo culture is refined, with an open mind tough, noble character and sterling integrity, self-contained, the outspoken faithful, and just Houdezaiwu, Sophie, loyalty, justice, expressing the character of our nation ,tolerance, patriotism and progress spirit.

Bamboo Building

Once upon a time, I saw a bamboo building, surrounded by many bamboo, appearing in the TV series,” The Journey to the West”. It was a house in Yunnan. I was greatly attracted by its simpleness in style, light green in color and beauty in appearance. I had a dream to live in such building one day in the future.

Though I can not realize my dream now, I have deep interest in bamboo building and I look up information about it as more as possible. And now I am able to say something about bamboo building.

In Colombia, an architect, Simon Velez, has designed one of the world’s largest bamboo structures, a polo clubhouse. He has built many bamboo buildings, raging ranging from private residences to lodges. Why can bamboo be used to build a building? What are the advantages to do so? So, let us come to the quality of bamboo first.

Bamboo offers advantages over many conventional building materials, fast-growing, quick-maturing, hardy, flexible, strong and renewable. And its high-density strength — in some ways stronger than steel, concrete and spruce — is due to its high content of silicates. Its reproduction rate is astounding. It is said that its regeneration rate is so much better than tree forests. How surprise it is, isn’t it? What is more, bamboo fibers can be superior to wood. It can replace mature fiber every three and a half years. When harvesting soft woods on a 50- to 60-year cycle, what’s being harvested is juvenile fiber. And bamboo offers more dimensional stability. Maybe, these are all the reasons why bamboo can be used to build a building, I think.

Above all, building a building by using bamboo is becoming a good choice to do no harm to the environment according to its great quality. And I will try my best to live in a bamboo building in the future.