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Comment by Dept of PMM Castle Life on January 21, 2011 at 11:58pm

Bamboo has been used in China for over 5000 years - the earliest history of bamboo use in the entire world. In ancient China, bamboo was used for making books, food, paper, some of the greatest palace buildings the Emperors had and many other items. In the Jin Dynasty a special book on bamboo was written in 265-316 A.D., in which many of China's bamboo species were recorded in detail. It was the last native Chinese dynasty to rule the empire the Ming Dynasty, spanning almost three centuries between 1368 and 1644 to use bamboo as bedding. Some historians argue that Early Ming China was the most advanced nation on Earth at the time.

China is known as the Kingdom of Bamboo because it has the most bamboo of any country in the world. More than 400 species of bamboo, one third of all the known species in the world, grow in China. China leads the world in the amount of area planted with bamboo, the number of bamboo trees, and the amount of bamboo wood produced every year. The areas that produce the most bamboo are south of the Changjiang (Yangtze) River, and the biggest producers are Sichuan, An hui, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Jiangsu provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The oldest archaeological finds of bamboo articles in China were unearthed from the remains of a primitive society that existed some 7,000 years ago in what is now Hemudu, Yuyao County, Zhejiang Province. As early as the Shang Dynasty (16th-11th century B.C.), the Chinese used bamboo for making household articles and weapons, such as bows and arrows. Before paper was invented, slips of bamboo were the most important writing medium. More widely used than silk, for example, because they were cheaper, resistant to corrosion, and more abundant. Bamboo has thus played an important part in the spread and development of traditional Chinese culture.

Bamboo was closely connected with the daily lives of people in ancient China. Su Dongpo (1037-1101), a literary giant of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), said that people could not live without bamboo. The people of the time used bamboo as firewood and to make tiles, paper, rafts, hats, rain capes, and shoes. At that time, as today, bamboo shoots were eaten as a popular dish because of their crispness and fresh, sweet taste. Bamboo shoots also contain vitamins, sugar, fat, and protein.

In the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D.220) bamboo was used for papermaking because it produced high-quality paper and was inexpensive - three tons of bamboo could yield one ton of paper pulp. Bamboo is still an important raw material for papermaking today. Some 1,600 years ago, people wrote with brushes on xuan paper made from young bamboo. Xuan paper is still popular for Chinese calligraphy and paintings.

Comment by Dept of PMM Castle Life on January 21, 2011 at 11:50pm

Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family.

In bamboo, the internodal regions of the stem are hollow and the vascular bundles in the cross section are scattered throughout the stem instead of in a cylindrical arrangement. The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent. The absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, even of palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering.

Bamboos are some of the fastest growing plants in the world. They are capable of growing 60 cm (24 in.) or more per day due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. However, the growth rate is dependent on local soil and climatic conditions.

Bamboos are of notable economic and cultural significance in East Asia and South East Asia, being used for building materials, as a food source, and as a versatile raw product.