My bamboo life

Those who know me already know that I am a bamboo aficionado (just needed to use that word). One of the sadnesses of leaving Australia was leaving behind all my clumping bamboos that had yet to reach their full potential, particularly my black bamboo (Bambusa lako). My Oldham's bamboo was doing the best (B. oldhamii) with some culms as tall as eight metres, but that should get even bigger in time. As well as growing bamboo I love the many other uses it can be put to; as garden stakes, as a building material, for 'wood' flooring, for furniture, for clothing, you name it. Is there anything that bamboo can't be made into? In terms of sustainability, you need look no further than bamboo. It is as strong, often stronger, than most timbers, but being a grass, it matures much sooner (three to five years), rather than fifteen to twenty (often longer) for most timbers. It grows fast and strong (some bamboo culms have been measured to grow a metre in a day!) absorbing plenty of carbon dioxide and providing a very useful product on an ongoing basis. Apparently, though I have not seen this, when cultivating Moso (Phyllostachys edulis) all they do to harvest it, is cut wide swathes across the grove, then allow this to regrow, and so keep harvesting alternating strips of it on an ongoing basis. No replanting necessary. How could you not love this plant?
One of the pluses of coming to Hong Kong is to come to a place where bamboo is respected, loved and widely used. It never fails to make me smile to see all the bamboo scaffolding around town, even on the tallest buildings - it is actually a shock to see 'normal' steel scaffolds. Not only do I see it planted around widely - I walk past many clumps on my way to the bus stop - but so much that I buy is made from bamboo, not as a selling point, but because that is normal. Since we brought so little with us to Hong Kong (it really focusses the mind about what is necessary, paying air freight charges), we have had to buy a lot of things since we have been here, and naturally much of this is bamboo. So what have I got that is made from bamboo so far? A tray, a rice spoon, a spatula, a toothbrush holder (made very simply with the base being a bamboo internode, and the open top being sanded away a little bit for a more rounded look), some bamboo coasters, a bamboo chopping-board (naturally), and a pretty bamboo fruit bowl. I am sure there will be more to come, but for now that seems like a lot.
I guess I see bamboo as the shape of things to come, in an energy-constrained climate-conscious world. It is low-tech, easily created (grown) and worked with simple tools, often by hand. It is very strong, with high tensile strength, and flexible, making it suitable for use as a framing material for housing, even in earthquake zones (it is being used for this purpose by architects in Chile). To me, though I am no engineer, it is like a self-testing material - you know that if the bamboo culms are structurally sound in the grove, because they have been capable of standing upright when growing, you can have good confidence in their ability to maintain structural integrity when used for building. In my small experience of working with bamboo, it is possible to saw it, but trying to break it is immensely difficult, even with quite small culms, because it has such long and strong fibres that run right down the culms. It is these that provide the strength and flexibility both for things like scaffolding, but also when it is made into fabric.
Bamboo is also touted for its anti-bacterial qualities. I will need to research this more, but my understanding is that this is nothing too marvelous, simply that, like most woods, bamboo tends to absorb moisture from the environment into its surface, and this hugely reduces any chance for germs to breed, because they all rely on a moist environment. Please excuse this detour into hygiene - I am an early childhood teacher, so I have had to learn far more than I ever wanted to know about infection control and minimisation!

While on the subject of stuff and having to acquire more of it in Hong Kong, I have been very happy to find tableware that I love. As an occasional potter and lover of the craft of ceramics generally, I am always looking at objects made from clay, trying to understand how they are made, what aesthetic traditions they are drawing upon, and so on. In a Japanese department store here (YATA) we found a set by a Hong Kong company Dynasty, that caught our eye. I loved the ways it managed to find a different take on the teapot, milk jug and other items in the range. To my eye it looks both contemporary, but also 'cute'(俏). As there is also asymmetry in many elements, such as the off-centre lid of the sugar bowl, it also has Japanese influences. The design, which to my eye references cherries, and cherry-blossom, also seems to draw on Japanese influences. Mostly though, I love it because it makes me smile every time I look at it, and how can that be bad? Whatismore, I own my first set of ceramic 'chinese' spoons, and that must be a milestone of sorts...