page_title: Taiwanese bamboo weaving
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Taiwanese bamboo weaving / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Bamboo forest near Eastern Yonghe(東永和), Chiayi County, Taiwan Français&#160;: Forêt de bambou près de Shizhuo, comté de Chiayi, Taiwan
context_page_description: Bamboo weaving is a form of bambooworking and a traditional craft of Taiwan.
context_section_description: Taiwan is situated between the temperate zone and the subtropical zone. Such a climate propels the growth of both individual disperse temperate bamboo and connected subtropical bamboo jungles. As a result, the native Taiwanese have a close relationship with the bamboos here: bamboo shoots, which are what they eat, come out of bamboos; so does the bamboo hat, bamboo shoes, bamboo chair, bamboo house, etc., all of which are closely connected with their livelihood; as for the tools used in daily labor, most of them are bamboo products, such as fishing gears, farm tools, hunting instrument, and so on. During the period when Taiwan was invaded, the bamboo culture in Taiwan was deepened by the Japanese bamboo culture. So a unique and profound bamboo culture was formed in Taiwan, and the knitting skills were improved to a certain extent. Therefore, Taiwan has become famous for its bamboo weaving crafts all over the world out of its wholesome tradition and profound local features.
  About a century ago, the bambooworking was only limited to the making of living materials and productive tools such as hats, buckets, food steamers, dustpans, tables and chairs, beds, ridges and so on; when Taiwan was invaded by the Japanese at the end of the 19th century, the bamboo weaving skills were widely extended from the living and production use to the field of stationery, decoration, and even arts. In the meanwhile, the rough weaving skills were refined to be more delicate. The stationery case and lamp cover, which was woven by the Japanese artist at the Guangxu Times in Qing dynasty in China, was first discovered by Wang Zhenduo. Both these two bamboo products are beautiful in color, discreet in skills, and fashionable in pattern, which makes it too attractive to be released from one’s hands. The stationery case is 30 centimeters in length, 18 centimeters in width, and 8 centimeters in height. Woven by a number of bamboo strips of 0.5 cm in width, the stationery case has such average gaps between every two strips that it seems as if it were produced by the assembly line in the factory rather than made by human hands. Besides, the purplish red bamboo strips, where letter paper and thread-bound books were placed, appear quite simple and historically meaningful. As for the lamp cover, it is 23 centimeters in length, and 5 centimeters in width. Seeing the brown bamboo filament on the lamp and the paper-cut window decoration, one must be reminiscent of a simply-dressed and elegant host of the room.
caption: Bamboo forest near Shizhuo, Chiayi County
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-HX1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:06:23 15:37:01", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Image ExifOffset": "304", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "942", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8201", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/160", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "125", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:03:04 12:49:41", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:03:04 12:49:41", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3456", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "3456", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "2592", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "792", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "09cac6ac3a0a4982d0a01e3865d5f086"}