It has withstood typhoons when steel framework has crumpled. Chinese bridges, hanging from cables of twisted bamboo, are ancestors of the entire world's suspension spans. Bamboo can be used in ceilings, moldings, rainspouts, gutters and posts. In Europe bamboo is used in horticulture, as supports for tomatoes, melons, hops, and fruits. Scandinavia imports it for ski poles and to mark the borders of roads buried under snow.
Larger culms go to makers of fishing rods and furniture.
Two-thirds of the bamboo China produces is used to make furniture and building supplies, and as reinforcement rods in concrete and heavy construction. There are infinitely more uses to bamboo such as supplanting steel as reinforcement for concrete, laminated with plastic under pressure to make building walls, windmill blades, the hulls of boats, replacing steel bolts in construction. Most impressive is making paper of many kinds, from heavy brown to fine-coated printing stock. These consist of man-made fibers embedded in a matrix that holds them in parallel bundles, called composite materials. Fiberglass has been known for a longtime and recently, man-grown fibers of boron, carbon, and other elements have produced materials with amazing stiffness and strength to weight ratios.