Brief introduction of bamboo culture

People in China have always loved bamboo, and China is also the first country in the world to study, cultivate and utilize bamboo. From the great role of bamboo in the development of Han traditional culture and the formation of spiritual culture, the long-standing relationship between bamboo and China's poetry, calligraphy and painting, and the close relationship between bamboo and the life of Han working people, it is not difficult to see that China is worthy of being a country of bamboo civilization. No plant can have such a profound impact on human civilization as bamboo. Many scholars use bamboo as a topic and metaphor. We call the role and influence of bamboo on human material civilization and spiritual civilization bamboo culture. Studies have proved that the Shang Dynasty in China already knew the various uses of bamboo, one of which was used as bamboo slips, that is, writing characters on bamboo pieces (sometimes with sawdust) and then stringing them together with ropes to form a book, thus producing a Chinese character book. Bamboo slips preserved a large number of precious documents before the Eastern Han Dynasty for us, such as Shangshu, Book of Rites and Analects of Confucius, all of which were written on bamboo slips. During the Yin and Shang Dynasties, books written with bamboo slips were called bamboo books, and letters written with bamboo slips were called bamboo newspapers. The invention of bamboo pen is also a pioneering page in cultural history. Oracle Bone Inscriptions, jade tablets and pottery unearthed in Yin Ruins all have Zhu Mo's brush calligraphy. There is also evidence in the cultural relics unearthed from the tomb of Zeng Houyi in Hubei Province and the tomb of Tian 'e in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Another great achievement in using bamboo is papermaking. As early as the 9th century, China began to use bamboo to make paper, about 1000 years earlier than Europe. Of course, the great development of bamboo paper is still after this. About making paper with bamboo, there is a detailed record in the Ming Dynasty's Tiangong Kaiwu, and a bamboo paper manufacturing map is attached. Making paper with bamboo marks the great development and achievement of ancient paper-making technology in China, and promotes the prosperity of China culture. In fact, before bamboo paper appeared, paper-making tools could not be separated from bamboo. From the appearance of bamboo slips to bamboo paper, bamboo has always occupied an important position in the history of cultural development, and played a direct and indirect role in preserving human knowledge and forming a glorious history and culture of the Han nationality with a long history.

In ancient China, bamboo was used in many ways. For example, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, our ancestors had already made a bamboo tool orange to lift water with a lever and a high-speed roller car to lift water with a bamboo tube for irrigation. Bamboo has also played an important role in the history of weapons development, from the initial bamboo bow archery to the trebuchet in the Spring and Autumn Period, the gunpowder arrow and the bamboo barrel musket in the Song Dynasty.

From the analysis of bamboo characters in Chinese characters, we can also see the history of bamboo utilization in ancient China. The ancients called plants that were neither rigid nor soft, neither grass nor wood, small and empty, and had great harmony procedures bamboo. From the morphological understanding, bamboo is processed into articles, and bamboo books are derived from bamboo books. With the continuous improvement of human understanding of bamboo, the application of bamboo is more and more extensive. The number of bamboo slips is bound to increase. China Cihai (version 1979) contains 209 bamboo slips such as pens, books, slips, articles, chopsticks, cages, flutes and sheng. Various dictionaries of past dynasties are even more impressive. Idioms such as "Peace in Zhu Bao", "Bamboo Silk Zhu Hao", "Childhood friends" and "Late in the morning" all contain interesting allusions related to bamboo. These bamboo slips and idioms involve all fields of society and life. On the one hand, they reflect that bamboo is more and more recognized and utilized by human beings; On the other hand, they reflect that bamboo has played an important role in industrial and agricultural production, culture and art, daily life and so on in China's thousands of years of history.