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FOR CENTURIES, THE
Vietnamese have seen themselves in the
hardy, strong, ramrod straight plant,
a fitting symbol for the strength and
resilience of the people. The fact that
bamboo grows in clusters speaks of the
nation’s solidarity.
Throughout the ages, the lowly
bamboo has found its way into
Vietnamese poems, folk tales and idioms.
A young, mythical Thanh Giong used
sharpened bamboo poles to repel foreign
invaders. “Their stems are thin, their
leaves slender, but they can become
ramparts and citadels,” goes the famous
poem Vietnamese Bamboo by Nguyen
Duy. “When the bamboo is old, sprouts
will appear,” says another proverb,
highlighting the importance of the older
generation paving the way for the new.
And who can forget the moral of one
bamboo chopstick being easily broken,
but the strength in numbers of an entire
bundle of bamboo chopsticks?
Not only is the plant symbolic,
it’s incredibly practical, used to make
everything from the essentials of
housing and furniture, fish and bird
traps, utensils and boats, to the artistic,
including musical instruments and
paper, not to mention its nutritional and
medicinal value.
On a particularly muggy morning, we
find ourselves walking through a shady
grove of bamboo at the 10-hectare Phu
An Bamboo Village, guided by Jacky
Gurgand, an octogenarian Frenchman.
An agricultural engineer, Jacky has been
coming to the village several times a
year since it was founded by his student,
Dr Diep Thi My Hanh, in 1999, to help
with the irrigation of the property and
the nomenclature of the 350 specimens
housed there.
“Feel this one,” he says. “We call
it Miss Saigon, the Beauty Queen of
bamboo.” Sure enough, the bamboo is
silky smooth to the touch. A little further
down, we arrive at another clump, this
one with a gritty sandpaper-like exterior.
“Mr. Saigon non rasé (unshaven),” he
says with a mighty laugh.
Throughout the morning’s visit,
Jacky introduces us to many of the
101 varieties of living bamboo at the
village, a dual purpose ecomuseum and
botanical conservatory dedicated to all
things bamboo located 40 km north of
Saigon, in Binh Duong Province. He
shows us the incredible diversity within
the bamboo family: a species that grows
sturdy perpendicular branches making
it a natural ladder, one that has thorns
which villagers use to build corrals for
livestock, and a painted variety, yellow
with perfectly straight green streaks,
looking like drips of paint.
Jacky has personally measured one
species on the property which grew 80
cm in one day (bamboo is the world’s
fastest growing plant, with certain
species able to grow 91 cm in a 24 hour
period), which leads him to mention
Bamboo Torture, the alleged practice
of fixing a prisoner above a sharpened
piece of bamboo and allowing it to grow
straight through the body (affirmed as
possible in a 2008 Mythbusters episode).
The Iron Triangle
Armed with a degree in Environmental
Ecology from Vietnam and a doctorate in
Environmental Science and Technology
from France, My Hanh returned to her
hometown of Phu An in the late 90s,
only to be asked by the villagers why
she didn’t use her extensive schooling
to help her own village. Best known for
OI VIETNAM
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