Urban Bamboo Forest

For all the environmental flack China gets from the rest of the word, there is at least one resource the Chinese use creatively and efficiently - Bamboo. As a renewable resource, which can renew itself in a few days during the rainy season, bamboo makes for a wonderfully useful plant. Aside from appearing in numerous dishes (pork fried with oyster sauce and bamboo shoots is one of my favorite dishes), bamboo is widely utilized in construction, even in Shanghai. Rare is the ingredient which can be used to build the restaurant, then be used in that restaurants food.

It was yesterday, while I was on my way to fetch some of my favorite fried pork dish, that I happened to walk down a street near my office which seemed to have been overrun by a growth of bamboo. Every facade on the entire street was being re-done and the workmen were busy assembling scaffolding made from bamboo shoots. Ten meter long shoots were being tied together with extra long twist-ties. The scaffolding only stretched 3 stories high, but when erected on both sides of a narrow street for the entire block, it begins to feel rather encompassing. On each story of the scaffolding the floor was made of woven bamboo mats covering support shoots. And although the thought of twist ties holding together hundreds of pounds of bamboo balanced above my head was nerve wracking, the workers didn't seem to mind as at least a dozen bounded around on different levels, securing more shoots and ties.

It's not the first time I've seen construction in Shanghai using bamboo scaffolding. In fact it is so common in Shanghai I have more confidence in it than I do in the rusted metal poles which are used on occasion for taller structures (the awesome sky scrappers get proper professional scaffolding - we don't want those falling down). I have no idea what they do with the bamboo after it's used for construction. Perhaps they eat it.