Paper making is one of China's four ancient great inventions. In the Han Dynasty, people began to use bamboo to make paper, which was of excellent quality and reasonable price. Even now it is used as one of the important raw materials in paper making. Some of the xuan paper for traditional Chinese painting is also made from tender bamboo. The ancient Chinese people used bamboo chips for calculation before the invention of the abacus.
With the invention of gunpowder, the people wished to go into space. In the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) a man tied a big bamboo tube on each of the four legs of a chair and filled them with gunpowder. He wanted to send the person on the chair to space by reactive force after lighting the gunpowder. Although it seems somewhat absurd, no one can deny its value as the embryonic form of the earliest "manned rocket."
Bamboo and Architecture
Bamboo has been used in architectural art since long ago. During the Han Dynasty skilful craftsmen built a magnificent palace for Emperor Hanwudi with bamboo. In southern China where bamboo is abundant, bamboo stilt houses are common residences for the people. Today, some minorities in Southwest China, like the Dai people in Yunnan, still live in the two-storied bamboo stilt houses — the upper floor of the house contains bedrooms, kitchens and balconies, and the ground floor is used to house poultry and domestic animals. The bamboo houses set off by green plantain trees makes for a lovely picture.
As it is light and tough with elasticity and bearing capacity, bamboo is an ideal building material, which can be used to construct houses, scaffolding and pillars. Enlightened by the Painting of Orchids and Bamboo, a masterpiece of the great Qing-dynasty painter and calligrapher Zheng Banqiao, Bei Luming,the world-famous architecture-design master, designed a 315-meter, 70-story mansion for China Bank. This magnificent building still stands lofty and firm in Hong Kong despite the horrible typhoons.
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