Bamboo Is Innocent

When reporter Julie Blu-Sae got on a plane to Hong Kong in November of last year,

“she thought she was going to cover the aftermath of a disaster.”

Julie is a China correspondent for the Dutch newspaper, Diffolksgrunt. I've seen the images on the news the evening before. Seven huge residential towers in the typo neighborhood of Hong Kong, completely engulfed in flames. By the time I landed 20 hours at past, I figured the fire would be out

and I'd be documenting the wreckage talking to survivors. But that's not what she found. When I got there, the buildings, all part of this complex called Wong Foot Court, were still burning, not smoldering, but burning. Seven towers, 32 stories each, and still on fire, still billowing smoke.

I guess there's one or two towers that are completely black and then there's a few that are just filled with smoke. It's kind of insane.

“And every so often you'd hear it before you saw it.”

These explosions or banging sounds coming from somewhere deep inside the towers. I was talking about it with my friend Jones. She was helping me translate from Cantonese that day.

They first mad about it is a classroom on kitchen.

Or maybe just. And then all my daughter is quite serious. Get things serious right now. Julie was standing in a park just across the way from the burning complex. And all around her were people from the neighborhood.

There was this 73-year-old guy called Mamming, a local, who'd been at the park when the fire broke out the day before. He'd seen it start.

“He told me the flames just raced up those 32 floors.”

And within 20 minutes, the firefighters had completely lost control. Slowly, slowly, slowly. It's your turn goal, you're not. You're going to slowly hide which was in your mouth. And I asked him because this was already the narrative that was forming in the news.

I'd read it on my phone on the way to the airport that morning. I asked him, "Was it the bamboo?" The eight towers at Taipo had been undergoing renovation. And all seven that were on fire were wrapped from top to bottom in bamboo scaffolding. In the immediate wake of the inferno, bamboo was the most obvious culprit.

Breaking news from Hong Kong where a massive fire has engulfed a housing complex. Bamboo scaffolding fixed on the outside of the towers is fueling the blaze. The fire spread quickly due to bamboo scaffolding and highly flammable. The housing complex was covered in scaffolding made from bamboo, which appeased to have helped the fire spread. But Ma was adamant in his answer.

He said, "No, it wasn't because of the bamboo that the fire spread so quickly." He insisted it was because of the plastic netting that had been draped around the bamboo. That's what caught. For someone who isn't from Hong Kong, our discussion at that moment might have appeared strange, maybe even insensitive.

The buildings were still burning behind us. Nearly 300 people were still on account for. And here we were distinguishing between construction materials. Only that distinction, bamboo versus netting, would turn out to matter enormously. Because bamboo scaffolding is a tradition that has long helped set this city apart from the Chinese mainland.

But now the fire at Wong Fook Court might dispel the end of bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong. If you've ever seen any images of Hong Kong, you've seen it's bamboo. It's just as iconic as Hong Kong's fairies dim some restaurants, skyscrapers and neon signs. The omnipresent use of bamboo scaffolding for construction or renovation jobs.

In Hong Kong, entire skyscrapers are often fully encased in bamboo scaffolding. On any given day, countless stalks of bamboo covered dozens of glass office buildings from top to bottom, enveloping the city's skyline, like a veil. It's really hard to overstate how much bamboo is part of Hong Kong's image and identity. In tourist shops, I even found these little plastic miniatures of Hong Kong buildings,

and they all included bamboo scaffolding. And for those who haven't had the chance to go to Hong Kong,

there's always this vital action scene in Rush Hour, too, with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.

The scene hinges on a stunt in which Chan and Tucker maneuver across the bamboo scaffolding on the side of a building.

Don't worry, Chan is bamboo, it's very strong. You're so mad! I'm sure!

Until finally, it breaks.

Because, you know, it's a comedy.

“You won't see anywhere near this much bamboo in the rest of China.”

Today on China's mainland, including where I live in Beijing, scaffolding is made out of metal, not bamboo. Other places in China might have their own vernacular building styles, but only in Hong Kong is the site of construction and maintenance itself, part of the vernacular identity. Perhaps no city on Earth more proudly displays its own upkeep. Therefore, I say that bamboo scaffold is just like grow together with Hong Kong.

This is low, an engineer with over 30 years of experience in Hong Kong's construction industry.

He asked me not to use his full name. And low things, the tradition of bamboo scaffolding, hasn't survived here simply by accident. Hong Kong, he says, was by necessity built with bamboo.

“Hong Kong is the place we don't have much flat land.”

It's the curl of a mountain hill, and you can see Hong Kong Island. Most of the ground is this zilloping. But the premium on usable land, Hong Kong is extraordinarily dense. Its streets are narrow, its alleys narrower. Construction and repair work in these spaces is notoriously tricky, requiring constant adaptation.

Therefore, we try to use some, well, it's quite some very flexible, easy to mobilize solution for the problem. This is all the benefit of bamboo scaffold. Bamboo is far lighter than steel. It's even lighter than wood.

“It's actually a grass, so it can be easily carried and assembled by hand.”

And there's no standard size. You can quickly cut it down to suit whatever space it needs to fit. The result is that this ancient construction material is still useful, maybe even perfect, for modern crowded Hong Kong. There's a line from a bamboo scaffolding master that sums it up perfectly. Wherever a person fits, a bamboo scaffold fits. And for something as straight as bamboo, you'd be surprised how many shapes can be made out of it.

Walk around Hong Kong and you'll see, lopsided bamboo pyramids surrounding movie markings, and long bamboo tendrils, snaking around windows. And then there's this, bamboo scaffolding doesn't need to be anchored to the ground, or descend from the roof of a structure with a crane. Instead, the 65th floor of an office building is often the starting place for a typical bamboo platform. Most of the time, it just shoots straight out of the window with nothing but air underneath it. And there, two scaffolders working alone can quickly build the bamboo out in any shape and direction that's required for the job.

All without ever for a second touching the ground, or blocking traffic.

Heavy metal scaffolding by contrast usually needs to be built from the ground up. It comes in fixed tube lengths and requires clamps, platforms, and standardized components. On a flat surface in an open space, it's fast and it's cheap. But in a narrow alley, on a curved facade, on the side of a 64-story tower on a Hong Kong hillside, still becomes slow and expensive. Embambo scaffolding isn't just practical for patching up a building or making repairs. It's often the ways skyscrapers are constructed in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is famous for its daring and surreal architecture. And low believes that's because bamboo has made it easier for construction firms here to pursue ambitious designs more often. He says bamboo scaffolding is so easy to manipulate that it can be molded alongside any shape and architecture requires. Just a little Taylor, because every time an angle off of this scaffold, perfectly match with the building shape. And if no choice, we have to use metascofo, then maybe we need to use one or two months or more time for preparations.

Because everything is heavy by feet or for times or more, bamboo scaffolders usually require far less prep. Instead, most of the time, they just show up eyeball the situation and get to work. Hey, good morning. On a recent Hot Humid Day in Hong Kong, I watched one such scene play out from a tiny alley in the Prince Edward neighborhood, next to two dim sum restaurants, the Jade and the Pearl. The alley couldn't have been more than three meters wide, flanked on both sides by tall residential buildings.

So that one will be the building we're working at the Orange Colour one, but we can walk around to see all the pipes where they are, and we're working at the 14th floor. The assignment that day was to build a bamboo balcony that could reach an air conditioning unit on the side of one of the buildings. This is probably the single most common job scalfters are asked to do here. Modern Hong Kong is nothing without its air conditioning. But Hong Kong's AC units are not the dinky one-off window units that you see in a lot of American apartments.

They're usually located away from windows in hard to reach places, crammed alongside a complicated maze of pipes and fixtures for plumbing electricity, internet, everything. And this building was no different, but Timmy assured me they'd make quick work of it.

“You already came here before, is that what's happening now?”

No, it's happening now. This is the first time I've been here.

All their equipment seemed custom made for Hong Kong. They had this tiny cart designed to slot exactly inside a standard Hong Kong elevator with just enough space on the side for two scaffolders. And on top of it, all their gear, alongside bundles of bamboo. Oh, it fits perfectly. Yes, everything on our design bow itself, so it fits all the most of the aroma in Hong Kong.

You just like asked someone to make it precisely according to your own dimensions. Actually, my father made it by himself, so it's all unique design. The elevator only went to the 13th floor. The carry their supplies to the next floor themselves. No problem. They picked up the bamboo poles and walked up the stairs as if they weighed nothing.

Which compared to steel, they basically do.

“In which Shirley counts is one of the great disappointments of my life.”

Safety regulations prohibit me from going out onto the scaffolding with them. So I went back down to gok at them from the alley. We stayed in touch by Waki Toki. Let me see if I can... Oh yeah, there you are. I watched as Timmy strapped into a harness, stepped out of a tiny window into the air,

and balanced himself on a small length of pipe, about 45 meters above me. He drilled some metal brackets into the wall and then his father started handing him bamboo poles through the window, one by one. He laid them across the brackets, tied them up, and built a little platform for himself to stand on. The poles were light enough that he could just grab and hold them with one hand. Not exactly something you could do with steel.

So every time when I received the materials from the window, I have to increase the materials. Then my partner can fill with and he'll release the materials from his hand. He cannot fill with, he shouldn't release the materials.

“So that's how we come in the case, and we never drop anything.”

Within a few minutes, Timmy was already well on his way to making what some in the industry call a bird cage. A sort of safe enclosure for a repairman to work in. Later, Timmy would tell me this was a tougher job than he thought. Lots of unexpected angles and distances. But from where I was standing, you wouldn't know it.

His father just kept handing him the bamboo poles at a steady rate. There's number 6, and his father is already extending the 7th one while he's lashing the 6th into place. Probably takes no longer than 10 seconds to connect them. There's some passers by or wondering what we're so fascinated by. As I watched Timmy and his father build out the bird cage, the alley continued to go about his business.

Some cleaners came and went and employed you from one of the dim sum restaurants took out some trash. Another was moving around Styrofoam boxes. And maybe that was the best part. The way the bamboo let everyone else's lives just go on. Steel scaffolding for this job would have likely had to start from the ground floor, blocking half of this narrow alley.

But this scaffold never got anywhere near the ground.

It stayed well out of the way of the hustle and bustle below. 90 minutes later, the cage was finished. Just another piece of bamboo scaffolding, floating above one of the city's busiest neighborhoods. Seeds like this are so commonplace that residents barely notice. But look up from nearly any street corner and more likely than not.

You can see bamboo scaffolders making the nearly impossible look easy. It's why bamboo still accounts for roughly 80% of all scaffolding in Hong Kong. But just because bamboo is easy to work with doesn't mean it's easy to learn. That's bamboo's one honest disadvantage compared to metal.

The craft has been passed down father to son, job by job.

“I think the easiest way to explain is like a teacher.”

But in old days when they learn from teacher, they live together. They even help to cook, they help to wash, so everything. Timmy told me he's a third generation scaffolder. His family's company builds bamboo scaffolding all around town. He's also the assistant head of a Builders Association.

He said the work still challenges him, 12 years into the job, working together with his dad. And I'll call him Seafood. Master. Master, yes. Are you a master already?

Yes, I'm also a master.

But on the Chinese mainland, where bamboo scaffolding was never as popular.

“This knowledge has almost entirely disappeared.”

It was mostly replaced by metal decades ago. And in 2022, it was banned nationwide for all housing and municipal engineering. Hong Kong is one of the last places on earth where bamboo scaffolding survives as a living practice. Not as a heritage performance, but as the actual way buildings get built. But then came the fire.

And the world watched as the towers in Taipo burned, covered in bamboo. The search continues for survivors and those are horrifying pictures. And police say there are still people trapped inside the building. Darts, climbers of torchlights in some floors. And the bamboo scaffolding on one of the 31 story tower blocks looks to have caught fire and is causing the flames to spread.

Hong Kong, it's one of the most horrific things that I have ever worth to describe it. When we come back, the possible end of bamboo scaffolding and what it means for Hong Kong.

“We're back with a reporter, Julie Blusay.”

The same day I flew in from Beijing to cover the fire at one foot court. Timmy So was called in for an emergency meeting at Hong Kong's development bureau. And it only been one day since the start of the fire. And I was quite shocked that it comes so fast because the fire is not under control yet.

It's just still at the second day of the fire.

And it's a little bit shocked. A few months before Hong Kong's government under pressure from Beijing had already begun making local construction companies increase their use of metal scaffolding. The government had sided safety concerns. Although some suspected it was a way for Beijing to bring in more mainland construction workers who are trained on metal. So going into the meeting, Timmy was bracing himself.

And once I arrived the meeting place, there is a agenda on the table. And the agenda title is "Roll Map" on adoption of scaffolding. It was a timetable, drafted by the development bureau for the complete phase out of bamboo scaffolding. It all construction sites in Hong Kong. The official rationale was straightforward.

Metal scaffolding is more fire resistant than bamboo. The bureau asked the Hong Kong construction industry to agree to the accelerated phase out of bamboo. It was time they said to move on. Timmy still spoke up. He resisted the band, but only briefly.

It was already clear that more than 100 people had died in the fire. And so he says, "Resistance felt both pointless and almost inappropriate." So everyone, they forgot how bamboo scaffolding builds Hong Kong. Yeah. At that time, I was very disappointed, very hopeless.

Shortly after that, the phase out was made public by the Hong Kong government. Bamboo scaffolding would be replaced with metal. Hong Kong's roughly 3,500 bamboo scaffolders would be incentivized to retrain, to work with steel. But almost immediately, something unexpected happened. The public pushed back.

People began posting videos online, trying and failing to set bamboo a light. Oh. Bamboo has a very high admission point of at least 260 degrees Celsius, and it is also very difficult to burn. No one was saying that the bamboo scaffolding hadn't caught fire along with everything else in typo. It had.

The question was whether the scaffolding was what caused the fire to spread.

The bamboo only burned after the flames had already spread. Not before. It wasn't the reason the fire got so bad. Instagram accounts ran posts claiming bamboo is innocent. And at a makeshift memorial that sprung up near the sight of the fire, right next to notes expressing grief for the victims.

I saw messages saying don't blame the bamboo.

This is actually one of the things that got me so interested in this story in the first place.

“Like, why did Hong Kongers rush to defend Bamboo so fiercely?”

I put the question to low, the Hong Kong engineer. I told him about my men, the man who defended the Bamboo, even as the towers were still burning in front of us. People were so adamant about it. No, it's not the Bamboo. When the fire is even still happening.

The bamboo is still burning at at at the same time. Why do the Hong Kong people care so much? Why? Why people respond later? Hmm.

Oh.

Can I say the people you met?

There's Matt. There's Matt. There's Mark.

“Yeah, there's some, because we live in the Bamboo for so many years.”

Right? From our child age, we see everywhere. It's Bamboo. The tradition of Bamboo scaffolding. That still means something to Hong Kongers.

But also, they weren't just defending a construction material for the sake of convention. 168 people died in this fire and thousands lost their homes.

People were sad and upset and low stressed to me how eager he and others were to find out what really went wrong.

But instead, it felt like the government was using Bamboo as a scapegoat. A way to declare the case closed instead of looking for the real culprit. Therefore, we angry about this and we realized that this is useless because the problem still is there. And similar thing may be happening again. Right?

We didn't learn to lesson.

“But for many Hong Kongers, the Bamboo Bam also felt like part of a pattern that they'd come to recognize.”

One that began in 1997 when Hong Kong was handed back to China by the United Kingdom. Many residents worried about what would happen to their local democratic government under Chinese rule. So Beijing made a promise. One country, two systems. Yes, Hong Kong would be part of China, but it would keep its own courts, civil liberties, and limited autonomy for 50 years.

But one country, two systems didn't last long. Since 2021, Hong Kong's government has consisted only of what Beijing calls patriots. Candidates approved by the central government. Today, it's widely understood that the city administrators will pretty much do Beijing's bidding. And increasingly, Hong Kongers suspect that what Beijing wants is to bring the city's cultural identity more in line with mainly in China.

By taking away those things that have long made Hong Kong unique. For instance, low told me how some historic buildings, buildings that reminded people of the old Hong Kong, have gotten demolished in recent years, instead of preserved. And the city's iconic neon signs, those dense overlapping cascades of Chinese characters that lit up Hong Kong streets for decades, Beijing had almost all of those taken down.

Also, they said, for safety concerns. We don't know why, but seems to us that those unique things of Hong Kong is being failed. Right? Just like the bamboo scarf, seems to us that we are moving like a normal mental entity. Or, I don't know, this is just a feeling.

But just saying these things outright, in least in public, has become too risky for most people. The National Security Law, which passed in 2020, has made any government criticism a potential crime. After the fire, one 24-year-old student was arrested for calling for an independent investigation. A political commentator in his 70s was arrested for criticizing the government's response online. The result is that most people in Hong Kong error on the side of keeping their thoughts private, or at least anonymous.

Low, for example, maintains an Instagram account. He uses to say what he really thinks about the building industry in Hong Kong. He keeps it under a pseudonym. And if I need to speech freely, then, it would be sensitive. Yeah, yeah, it would be sensitive. At this point, low dropped his voice. This kind of speech, he whispered to me, it's very dangerous in Hong Kong.

But seems that the government is not looking for us. They're looking for Beijing.

Hong Kongers have not yet been punished for simply defending bamboo scaffolding.

“Which means these days, the discussion of bamboo, can also function as a kind of coded form of political speech.”

A way of saying things that can't be said out loud. Five days after the fire started, I came across this group of young people who were filming a music video. The 26-year-old rapper named Chun-Gi-Ki, dressed head-to-toe in black, wrapping directly into the camera. I don't speak Cantonese, so I couldn't make out much until I caught the word bamboo. I see a lot of bamboo singing up a bigger one.

Turns out Chun-Gi-Ki-Ki was about bamboo.

Bamboo is my name, stubborn by nature, it goes. Bamboo is my name, stronger than you think.

The week before, shortly after the fire broke out, Chun had rushed a typo to help out. He delivered water and food to the firefighters. And now he said he wanted to use his music to help the bamboo as well. Because of the fire, we all realized that some people blamed the bamboo.

“So I made this song happen because I think we all know it's not because of the bamboo.”

It's just about some, I can't say too much, because of the law. That's fine, it's fine.

Can I quote you saying I can't say too much because of the law?

Yes, okay, I think yes. Chun was recording the music video at the Edge of Hong Kong in the village of So Tao. The village was holding a festival that only happens every 10 years. For the festival, they build a temporary bamboo theater, 6000 seats, Cantonese opera, ceremonies that last for days. It stands for a few weeks, then it comes down.

When Julie visited, it was still under construction. It was extraordinary just this vast bamboo skeleton completely open to the sky. You could walk through it through these corridors of bamboo poles, the size of a huge circus tent about 30 meters tall. And at some point I just laid on the ground just looking up at the structure at this intricate web of bamboo extending upwards. I asked one of the festival's organizers.

“If bamboo is banned, can this festival still happen? Can the theaters still be built in 10 years or 20?”

He didn't have a certain answer, but he did say, "I can't imagine building this out of metal." Bamboo Master Timiso is 38 years old. He assumed he still had decades of work out of him and a craft to pass on. Now he's not sure. When asked about the resistance campaign, how people rose up in defense of bamboo, he can only manage the weakest of smiles. The local training center has already canceled classes required for new bamboo scaffolders.

And the government is also providing incentives for all 3500 existing bamboo workers to switch licenses and get one for working with metal scaffolding. The aim is to replace bamboo completely with metal at all major construction sites within two years. So there will be no more new bamboo predators. So I think it's a little bit too late, but at least someone notices us. It's been over half a year since the fire, and no one is blaming the bamboo scaffolding anymore, including the Hong Kong government.

Instead, investigations have zeroed in on other highly flammable construction materials. The styrofoam boards that covered the windows, and the netting that surrounded the scaffolding. Just like Momang said, on day one of the fire. No safety checks had ever identified or flagged the use of these flammable materials, even though residents explicitly complained about them to authorities. Seven people have been charged following the fire.

All of them involved with the companies that carried out the renovations, but no one from the Hong Kong government has been held accountable. And even if the bamboo isn't to blame, the phase out of bamboo scaffolding won't be reversed. Like Timmy said, the new policy is moving forward. Still, Timmy doesn't think bamboo scaffolding can ever be banned completely. So long is there's an air conditioning unit and a hard to reach spot in a narrow alley between two oddly shaped buildings.

65 stores up. After I left Hong Kong, Chon sent me the demo of the song he'd been singing at the bamboo theater. I listened to the lyrics again. I won't accept this bullshit, they go.

Why put the blame on me?

One day you'll miss me when I'm gone.

[Music]

“99% invisible was reported this week by Julie Blusey and edited by Joe Rosenberg,”

with additional production by Jason De Leon.

Mixed by Martin Gonzalez, music by Swan Rial, and George Langford, fact checking by Graham Haitian. Many thanks to Raphaella and Dreetsey, an architect and photographer in Hong Kong,

“who helped us tremendously with the research for this episode and introduced us to bamboo masters, Timmy so and his father.”

Raphaella has been documenting Hong Kong's bamboo scaffolders since 2020.

Her writing and photography will be featured in an upcoming book that looks very cool. It's called the Bamboo Metropolis, and we will have a link to it on our website. Kathy 2 is our executive producer. Kirk Kolsted is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor.

“Our team includes Chris Barube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivienne Leigh, Lashmadon, Kelly Prime,”

Jacob Medina Gleason, Tallinn and Rain Stradley, and Mi Roman Morris. The 99% visible logo was created by Stephen Lawrence. We are part of the Series XM podcast family. Now headquartered six blocks north and the Pandora building. In beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California.

You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as room discord server. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org.