Bamboo is a very versatile material used for much more than simply making bamboo furniture. Bamboo furniture is a low cost, lightweight and environmentally friendly type of furniture. Often confused with rattan, is also used for making flooring, fences and even clothing. Bamboo furniture is commonly thought of as "Florida room furniture", and as porch furniture, bamboo is not a vine or a palm but actually a grass. Bamboos are grasses, but they vary in height from dwarf plants, less than one foot (30 cm) tall to giant timber bamboos that can grow to over 100 feet (40 m).
Totally, there are over 1250 bamboo species, 150 genera, and 17 million ha. Bamboo area in the world, among which, there are more than 500 species, 39 genera and 5 million ha. Throughout recorded history, bamboo has inspired poets and philosophers, craftsmen and musicians, healers and warriors.
China is reputed as a "Bamboo Kingdom". China not only is a big country of bamboo resources, but also has already accumulated rich experiences in bamboo¡¯s research, exploitation, production, and management, etc. Bamboo, when young, is a delicious food found on many Chinese menus worldwide, but especially in China. They grow in different climates, from tropical jungle to high on mountainsides. They vary substantially in clumping habit. Bamboo grows very quickly, up to 30 feet tall in two to three years. Some, often called runners, spread exuberantly, while others, known as clumbers, expand from the original planting more slowly to stay in a more defined clump. For this reason, plantations and factories are able to produce bamboo furniture and bamboo furniture-making raw materials in an easily renewable manner.
Bamboo has been playing an increasingly important role on forest sustainable development and replacing wood with bamboo thanks to its unique harmonious features of ecological social and economic benefits.
Bamboo is both decorative and useful. In many parts of the world it is food, animal fodder, the primary construction material and is also used for making a great variety of useful objects from baskets and kitchen tools, to paper and hats. China is in an advanced position of the world in many aspects of bamboo.
Marked achievements have been scored in bamboo integrated processing and utilization in an industrialization scale, especially bamboo plywood, bamboo flooring, bamboo mats and bamboo shoot, bamboo's ability to yield to force without breaking, yet remain strong as steel, has been a model for the ideal human character, which is playing active and important roles in poverty alleviation for well-being, women in development and improvement of ecological environment.
In China, bamboo symbolizes eternal youth, while in Vietnam it is considered a brother to mankind. Revered throughout Asia for centuries, celebrated in prose and poetry, paintings and art - bamboo is only now beginning to be appreciated in the west.
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