Bamboo and Chinese Culture

2. The “Anthropomorphization” of Bamboo: From Thing-in-Itself to Thing-for-Us

Before human beings came into existence, bamboo, like the rest of the natural world, existed as a “thing-in-itself.” Unlike other species which allowed themselves to be acted upon by the forces of nature, we humans began to mold the world through purposeful actions aimed at achieving our own ends as soon as we arrived on the scene. These spontaneous and free actions have allowed us not only to understand but also to transform the world. Just as important, a new relationship has been forged between us and nature. By leaving our mark on nature, we have transformed parts of nature from a “thing-in-itself” into a “thing-for-us,” that is, an “anthropomorphized” or “humanized” nature. Humans manifested their innate strength in the transformation of nature and, in the process, determined and constantly revised their objectives. Such interactions endowed nature with human characteristics and, at the same time, helped with the continuous “improvement” of humans in this process of “anthropomorphization.”² Georg W. F. Hegel once said:

Human beings have an impulse to get exactly what they want from the outward things they face, and to know who they are in the practice. They achieve this goal by changing and branding the outward things with their own minds, thus finding these things align with their personalities. The purpose of such free-man activities is to shorten the stubborn distance between humans and the outside world. They appreciate the changed things more because it is the outer reality that belongs to them.³

The birth and ascendancy of human beings fundamentally changed nature in this process, known as “the humanization of nature.” Bamboo, like the rest of nature, was gradually “anthropomorphized” throughout the course of Chinese history and has permeated into our lives. The Chinese people extended their reach with bamboo by processing and transforming bamboo into various production tools and everyday objects. This process of development and the utilization of bamboo, also known as the “anthropomorphization” of bamboo, had been maintained and furthered by the Chinese people from primitive society to the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

China was among the countries where the earliest use of bamboo as a resource has been documented. Research shows that primitive humans living ten thousand years ago in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River were already cultivating and making use of bamboo.⁴ In the North, the remains of bamboo rats were unearthed in the Banpo Site (6080–5600 B.C.) in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Bamboo charcoal and bamboo knot-shaped pottery were unearthed at the site of the Longshan Culture (2800–2300 BC) in Licheng, Shandong Province. In the Yin Ruins of Henan Province, together with the remains of bamboo rats, a number of tortoise shells and animal bones for divination were found, inscribed with the oracle bone script meaning “bamboo,” “bamboo arrow bag,” and “bamboo arrow,” showing that bamboo was indispensable in people’s daily life during the Shang Dynasty. According to textual research, King Zhou in the Shang Dynasty had set up a bamboo arrow training field in Qi Garden along the Qi River and had specially appointed officials to manage it.

In the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was the advent of a new occupation named “bamboo craftsman,” and bamboo was subsequently processed into a broad range of objects, including long poles, bookcases, carpets, hairpins, containers, dustpans, and mats. In the Qin Dynasty, “there were vast bamboo forests along the Wei River …. Local people lived a well-off life, like a feudal lord over thousands of households.”⁵ In the Han Dynasty, special officers named Sizhuzhang and Sizhucheng were in charge of the management of official bamboo forests, indicating the extensive utilization of bamboo materials at that time. During the Jin Dynasty, the world’s first attempt to make paper from bamboo was made by Chinese people.⁶ In the Southern and Northern Dynasties, managers of bamboo were called Dajiangqing in the Liang period, Dajiang in the Northern Qi period and Simu Zhongdafu in the Northern Zhou period. Later, the Sui Dynasty adopted the Northern Zhou’s official system and appointed special managers of the bamboo forest as Simu Zhongdafu’s subordinates.

In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, the stable society and thriving economic situation spurred the demand for bamboo. At that time, there were officials in the Jiangzuojian (the Royal Construction and Manufacturing Bureau) managing bamboo material, and the Shanglinshu (the Royal Cultivation Office) in the Siyuan (the Royal Garden Bureau) in charge of cultivating bamboos and trees. Jiangzuojian was expanded in the Song Dynasty with thirty-one subordinate offices carrying out large-scale production of bamboo products. The records contained in the History of the Jin Dynasty-Economic Volume reveal that the “Sizhujian (the Bamboo Management Bureau) purchased and consumed 500,000 bamboos every year,” a statistic that illustrates the prosperity of the bamboo industry at that time. Afterward, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty began to monopolize bamboo through the Sizhujian. “Every year, under the supervision of the tax officials, bamboo was cut down at the proper time, and then sold at three-level prices according to their quality. By paying a certain amount of administrative charge, bamboo merchants could get a certificate of business, otherwise they would be convicted according to the law.”⁷ The rulers of the Ming Dynasty set up the “Zhumufang” (the Bamboo and Wood Company) to manage the trade of bamboo and wood, thus converting the monopolistic control of bamboo into a system of free trade. In the first year of the Shunzhi period (A.D. 1644) in the Qing Dynasty, the Shanglinyuanjian (the Royal Cultivation Bureau) was established with four offices under its jurisdiction, among which the Linhengshu (the Forestry Office) specially managed the bamboo and woods.⁸

With the development of the Chinese nation’s practical activities, the increasingly “humanized” and “culturalized” bamboo had gradually deepened from the surface level to a much deeper level within Chinese culture, occupying a place that met the multi-level needs of the Chinese people in terms of physiology (survival), safety, social interaction, respect, acquisition of knowledge, aesthetics and self- realization. When it comes to early production tools, bamboo was first processed into simple and rough excavation tools, farm implements for sowing, and hunting tools. With the further transformation of nature, the Chinese people gradually deepened the degree of the processing of nature in a more complicated way, making more advanced production tools, such as textile machines and salt-making equipment, out of bamboo in order to meet the needs of productivity development. As for everyday objects, they were gradually no longer limited to crude chopsticks, containers and other lightly processed products, but were extended to delicate intensively processed products such as bamboo mats, fans and furniture. In the realm of cuisine and food culture, bamboo shoots were transmuted from a common ingredient into medicinal food and delicacies meant to cure diseases and nourishing the human body. When it comes to architecture and the construction industry, simple bamboo buildings built for protection from wild animals and the cold evolved to become more ornamental. With the evolution of Chinese culture, bamboo has been sublimated from a material object to a conceptual image, touching people’s hearts in an internalized and implicit way. It has been transformed into religious and mystical objects that are respected, worshipped and prayed to, into aesthetic objects for artists to express their emotions and dreams, and into exemplars personified by idealists to embody their conceptions of the ideal personality. Karl Marx once said, “The production of ideas, concepts and consciousness are initially intertwined with the material activities and material exchanges of human beings, and the language in real life. In this regard, concepts, thinking and the spiritual interaction of mankind are the direct products of human material relations.”⁹ This is a kind of sequential evolution in the sense of fact, and the internalization process of bamboo culture from material culture to conceptual culture is consistent with it.

In the field of spiritual culture, bamboo is free from the constraint of utilitarian purpose and attains a “purposiveness without purpose,” directly exemplifying the strength of pious religious sentiment, the tranquility and elegance prized in the Chinese aesthetic, the fidelity and resilience of the ideal personality and the overall cultural awareness of the Chinese people. At this point, the material form of bamboo has been made implicit and symbolic, while the “independent consciousness” of the Chinese people embodied by bamboo has become manifest. Bamboo has evolved into an important symbol of Chinese culture and has thoroughly become a “thing-for-us.”

3. Bamboo as a Kind of Culture: Generalization of Extension and Internalization of Connotation

Bamboo has a ubiquitous presence in all aspects of the lives of the Chinese people, including food, daily objects, production tools, buildings, vehicles, writing instruments, artworks, handicrafts and musical instruments, as well as witchcraft, religion, literature, art, personality and ethics. Mr. Liang Shuming once said, “The so-called culture is but a variety of aspects of a nation’s life, which can be summarized into three. First, spiritual life, such as religion, philosophy, science and art. Second, social life, which is the lifestyle we develop while interacting with the other social units around, including our family, friends, state, world and even the whole society. Specifically, ethical habits, political systems and economic relations are all social life. Third, material life, including all kinds of enjoyment in daily life and various cases of humans surviving in nature.”¹⁰ Since all the domains of human life are included in the extension of culture, and since bamboo is pervasive in all aspects of Chinese life, it follows that, in terms of the extension of “culture,” bamboo is culturally significant in Chinese life.

Through their uses and valuations of bamboo, the Chinese people demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of nature, their wisdom and ability to create, their production methods, their social relations, their modes of emotion and thinking, their value orientations and the pursuits of their dreams. Ancient people had long regarded bamboo shoots as valuable delicacies rather than an ordinary food meant to satisfy their hunger. They would sigh with emotion: “I’m full but still want some bamboo shoots.” “Life without bamboo is vulgar” (Su Shi). “Bamboo shoots are the newborn spiritual energy between heaven and earth. Eat them often to absorb the energy.”¹¹ The bamboo hat was used not only by ordinary people to avoid the sunshine and rain, but also as the “ceremonial crown” for emperors in “various sacrificial ceremonies.” Bamboo represents someone who is outwardly yielding but inwardly firm in the line, “Bamboo hats, straw shoes and coarse clothing mask my unchanged ambition.”¹² Bamboo is the symbol of the literati’s perseverance and indifference to fame and fortune in “How lovely the tough bamboo is in the cold winter. Let’s leave this mortal world another day.”¹³ Bamboo stick was regarded as a funeral supply and a symbol of personal aspiration, instead of a mountaineering stick for travelers to maintain balance, as evidenced in “Cylindric bamboo stick and cuboid Chinese parasol wood are the symbols of heaven (father) and earth (mother) respectively” and “At a father’s funeral, the ceremonial stick used by his son is made of bamboo to show the noble nature of him.”¹⁴ The ancients built houses with bamboo to embody the concept of a simple life and to highlight their views on the laws of nature and the architectural principle of “following the laws of nature, regarding architecture as the same as clothes and cars, which need to be changed in time,”¹⁵ as well as the tradition of people cultivating themselves by appreciating natural scenery, which is shown in “As a low-level official, you are happier than those high-level ones. Bamboos gathered by the West River are made into tall buildings, with the gentle south wind as your automatic fan. Waterfowl accompany you, who is always leisurely.”¹⁶ When bamboo was incorporated into handicrafts, songs and carols, paintings and totems, or regarded as divine and a symbol of the ideal personality of the Chinese people, it directly represented the Chinese traditional value system, including the reserved and delicate emotional type, the analogical thinking of “setting up a moral model,” the aesthetic preference for tenderness and harmony, the rational religious thought that places more emphasis on the practice of doctrines from a pragmatic point of view, and the pursuit of placing equal emphasis on ambition and love for peaceful life and nature.

A French psychologist once said in Cultural Dynamics that “culture is an intellectual aspect of the artistic environment created by mankind in the development of their own social life and an abstract factor of the world around them.”¹⁷ According to Daniel Bell, an American social scientist, “culture is an expressive area full of symbolism and significance.”¹⁸ In Japan, “culture” is interpreted as “Generally speaking, human beings assume certain value (cultural value) with nature as the material, and strive for realizing it. That is culture” in the Encyclopedia of World Culture.¹⁹ Liang Qichao, an enlightenment intellectual in China, clearly stated that “culture is a valuable common cause of human beings born from their thought.”²⁰ As far as the connotation of culture is concerned, it refers to the inherent spiritual world of human beings consisting of emotional types, thinking modes and value systems represented in all aspects of human life. From the perspective of the connotation of “culture,” bamboo in Chinese people’s life is similar to culture in some aspects insofar as, it is people-oriented and represents the inherent spiritual world of Chinese people.

Bamboo in Chinese people’s life has both the characteristics of universality and the internalization of “culture.” By being involved in various fields of the life of Chinese people, bamboo is internalized to their spiritual world and centered on the opinion of value. For these reasons, we believe that bamboo is rightly considered to be a Chinese bamboo culture and take this as the theoretical premise and starting point of this book.

4. Content of Chinese Bamboo Culture: Landscape and Symbol of Bamboo Culture

Scholars often divide and classify culture into material culture and spiritual culture (or non-material culture), but they are in confusion when classifying Chinese bamboo culture in this way. From the perspective of function, the use of bamboo in writing instruments, handicrafts, musical instruments, props used in dance performances and other bamboo products of this kind, bamboo appears to fall within the realm of spiritual activities. As a result, it is more appropriate to classify these objects within spiritual culture rather than material culture. However, bamboo is always processed into material products, and it does not directly show the human spirit like the products of spiritual activities. Therefore, as far as bamboo itself is concerned, it is not proper to classify these kinds of objects into spiritual culture. In other words, these special objects used in the field of spiritual life are the same as the bamboo shoots, production tools, buildings, transportation vehicles and other bamboo products used in everyday life. They are “humanized” nature combined with human culture and the scenarios consciously created with bamboo by the Chinese nation for specific needs in certain practices. Besides, bamboo plays the role of raw material in food, daily objects, production tools, transportation vehicles, buildings, writing instruments, handicrafts, musical instruments and props used in dance performances, which is a role played differently from that in sorcery, religion, literary painting and ethical norms, where bamboo is a direct representation and symbol of human emotions, thinking, ideas, values, aspirations and other components of the spiritual world. It is not the bamboo itself but the products made of bamboo and their usage norms that demonstrate the specific cultural connotation. There is an obvious boundary between the two cultural significances of bamboo, but it lies between cultural landscape and cultural symbolism, not between material culture and spiritual culture. On this theoretical basis, the book is divided into two parts. One part explores the cultural significances of the cultural landscape of bamboo. The other part explores the cultural symbolism of bamboo.

The cultural landscape of bamboo refers to the nature of Chinese culture as evidenced by the humanized bamboo, or the scenarios consciously created by the Chinese people to meet the needs of life, production, writing and aesthetics. The bamboo cultural landscape exhibits not only the psychological trend and characteristics of the Chinese people but also the level to which the Chinese national culture has evolved. Although bamboo is a material element that forms the cultural landscape, it has a spiritual effect, which is the external form of the Chinese inherent spirit.

The consumption of bamboo shoots is one part of the cultural landscape of Chinese bamboo. Eating is an instinct common to all the animals including humans, but humans are special animals regulated by social and cultural lives, who formulated a set of dietary rules and taboos known as “eating methods,” and who endowed their particular eating processes with culture connotations. According to the records of The Book of Songs and Yu Gong (Yu’s Chinese Geography in the Legend), Chinese people began to cook with bamboo shoots at least as early as in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and bamboo has been a famous Chinese specialty ever since. In ancient times, ordinary people had the same right to enjoy bamboo shoots as did the royal family, and people with religious duties even regarded bamboo shoots as important dishes and offerings to Chinese ancestors and spirits. In the common and time-honored process of eating bamboo shoots, the Chinese people have mastered a complete set of cooking and processing techniques, including roasting (braising), simmering (stewing), steaming, boiling, frying (container-roasting), blanching, stir-frying, baking and quick-frying. It is recorded in Qi Min Yao Shu (Measures for the Well-being of the People) that one could cook bamboo by “steaming, boiling, simmering or pickling, cook it in any way you like.”²¹ In southern and northern China, more than one hundred kinds of famous bamboo shoot dishes are recorded in recipes, including Fried Bamboo Shoots with Bamboo Porridge, Wontons Stuffed with Bamboo Shoots and Ferns, Delicacies from Mountains and Seas, Shiitake Mushroom and Bamboo Shoots Pies, Shredded Bamboo Shoots with Chicken Floss, Winter Bamboo Shoots in Eggplants Sauce, Braised Bamboo Shoots with Soybeans, Magnolia-Shaped Spring Bamboo Shoots, White Rabbit in the Bamboo Forest, and Butterfly-Shaped Winter Bamboo Shoots. Bamboo is not only regarded as food but also endowed with a strong cultural connotation. Because the Chinese nation arose from a farming culture, the Chinese people are very fond of plants like bamboo. In the post-figurative culture, the moral value in the elder-young relationship and the understanding of the nature-human relationship reside in bamboo.

The everyday objects made of bamboo are the second part of the cultural landscape of Chinese bamboo. They are human creations, and the material selection, the production processes, the shapes and sizes of these creations embody the emotions, concepts, thinking and values of their creators and users. Bamboo has been widely used by the Chinese people to make a variety of everyday objects, including kitchenware, tableware, tea sets, clothing, heat-relieving tools in summer, furniture, toys, and canes. The production process, shape, size and usage of these objects draw a unique picture of Chinese customs and the Chinese cultural landscape that embodies the strong ethicality and social concepts in Chinese culture, where collective interests outweigh individual interests, and reflect the Chinese people’s artistic attitude toward life.

The production tools made of bamboo are the third part of the cultural landscape of Chinese bamboo. Karl Marx regarded production tools as the skeletal and musculature systems of production, and they are “not only the measuring instrument for the development of human labor force, but also the indicator of the social relationship that helps with the labor.”²² From the perspective of culturology, production tools are the core content of cultural landscape about how the Chinese people treat nature and what is known about nature, as well as the emotional modes, the thinking modes and the value ideals in use when transforming and creating nature. In China, bamboo production tools not only indicate the slow development of traditional Chinese society, but also reflect the cultural psychology and the concept of a people in an environment dominated by a small-scale peasant economy. In ancient times, bamboo was an important material for making both simple and complicated production tools. In agriculture, farm instruments made of bamboo were used throughout the whole production process, consisting of seeding, cultivating, irrigating, harvesting, loading and transporting, plant drying, threshing, grain-drying, baking, winnowing, grain-husking, rice-winnowing and storing. In the handicraft industry, tools made of bamboo have penetrated into various sectors, including the production of paper, tea, sugar, salt and textiles. Among them, bamboo tools in the salt industry and the textile industry played the most prominent role. In the fishery industry, bamboo was processed into fishing tools to attract, hunt, cover and catch fishes. Although these bamboo production tools reveal the slow development of productivity in traditional Chinese society and the imbalance of economic levels between regions, they embody the wisdom, courage and ambition of the Chinese people to recognize and transform nature. They show the realistic and rational spirit of Chinese culture in dealing with nature according to local conditions, that is, to despise what is eternal and to affirm what is present.

The fourth part of the cultural landscape of Chinese bamboo includes the buildings made of bamboo, since shelter is one of the most basic needs of humans. What kind of habitat to create and how to create it are restricted by both natural factors—including the natural environment, human ability and human needs—and cultural factors—including lifestyle, ideals, religious beliefs and aesthetic interests. The “nest” was one of the earliest styles of residence for Chinese ancestors, and it was gradually replaced by the “stilt style” of dwelling using bamboo as one of the main building materials. In the Han Dynasty, the famous Ganquan Palace was built with bamboo. After the Song Dynasty, bamboo buildings gradually decreased in economically developed areas. But in the minority areas in southern China, bamboo buildings have been an important architectural form up until the present age. Chinese people incorporated bamboo into all parts of the house. They even “replaced roof tile, wall tile, marginal beam, principal column, pillar, eave, door, window, balcony and floor with bamboo.”²³ Agriculture is the foundation of China, and the bamboo architecture used in dwellings, temples, gardens and barracks embody this foundational concept of life. Both the Chinese people’s preference for a thrifty and simple life and an aesthetic tendency to favor the beautiful, the harmonious, the ethereal and the elegant are expressed in the use of bamboo.