There are two kinds of bamboo used in most Hong Kong scaffolding: they are called 篙竹 and 毛竹, Kao Jue and Mao Jue—meaning “pole bamboo” and “hair bamboo.” Mao Jue is thicker and stronger: 75mm in diameter, with walls at least 10mm thick. It’s used as the load-bearing support. Kao Jue is thinner: 40mm wide. It’s used for platforms, bracing and horizontal support. All bamboo is at least 3 years old, and air-dried for at least three months. In the past, strips of bamboo soaked in water were used to tie everything together, but making them was a time-consuming process. These days, workers use those ubiquitous black nylon strips instead.

 

A length of bamboo is half as heavy as the same length of steel tube scaffolding used elsewhere in the world. That makes it far easier and faster to work with: you can get a pole of bamboo up a building in seconds. It’s said to be six times faster to put up than steel, 12 times faster to take down—and it’s a fraction of the cost. Add to that the fact that you can cut a bamboo pole to fit an awkward space with a machete, and you’ve got a cheap, flexible material which was born for Hong Kong construction. 

 

Safety and quality concerns have phased bamboo scaffolding out across the rest of Asia: it’s not even allowed on the mainland any more. But in Hong Kong the tradition is going strong. Quality checks ensure that the material is up to standard. There are exhaustive guides and regulations for scaffolding in the government’s “Code of Practice for Bamboo Scaffolding Safety,” a document that perhaps overuses the word “erection.” “Provision of a workplace without risk of falling should always be the first consideration,” it says, helpfully. 

 

Writing this from the HK Magazine offices, I can see no fewer than eight bamboo balconies jutting from the sides of buildings, wrapped in flickering blue-and-white sheeting. They may exist for just a month or two but they feel permanent. Permanent because you see them everywhere in the city: a city of steel, glass, and the bamboo that got it there.