Bamboo Is Innocent

Summary

99% Invisible – “Bamboo Is Innocent”
Host: Roman Mars | Reporter: Julie Blusey | Air Date: August 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the cultural, practical, and political significance of bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong following a deadly fire at a residential complex. Through firsthand reporting, interviews with scaffolders, engineers, and locals, and analysis of the ensuing government response, the story unpacks why bamboo scaffolding is intertwined with Hong Kong’s identity and how its fate in the wake of tragedy reveals deeper tensions between tradition, modernization, and mainland Chinese influence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Taipo Fire and Public Reaction

[01:23–05:05]

• Reporter Julie Blusey arrives in Hong Kong expecting to cover the aftermath of a fire at the Wong Phuk Court housing complex, only to find the towers still ablaze.

• Locals and the media initially blame the iconic bamboo scaffolding for the rapid spread of the flames.

• Quote:
  “I asked him, was it the bamboo?” — Julie Blusey [02:44]
  “No. It wasn't because of the bamboo that the fire spread so quickly. He insisted it was because of the plastic netting… that makes the fire quickly spread out.” — Ma Ming, local resident, relayed by Julie [04:04]

• The scaffolding in question was wrapped in highly flammable plastic netting and foam, materials quickly identified by residents as dangerous.

2. Bamboo Scaffolding: More Than a Building Material

[05:05–10:49]

• Bamboo scaffolding is integral to Hong Kong’s visual landscape, culture, and efficiency in construction, especially given the city’s density and lack of flat land.
• Quote:
  “It’s really hard to overstate how much bamboo is part of Hong Kong’s image and identity.” — Julie Blusey [05:37]
• Unlike metal scaffolding, bamboo stalks are lightweight, adaptable, cut to fit any odd space, and assembled by hand:
  “Wherever a person fits, a bamboo scaffold fits.” — Unattributed old saying shared by Roman Mars [08:25]
• Bamboo scaffolds can be built outwards from windows high up, without touching the ground or disrupting the busy city below.

3. The Craft of Bamboo Scaffolders

[10:49–16:34]

• Third-generation scaffolder Timmy So demonstrates the practicality and artistry of the craft on a narrow alley job, building a birdcage platform for AC repair without touching the ground.
• Learning bamboo scaffolding takes years of apprenticeship, often passed down through families.
  “In old days, when they learn from teacher, they live together. They even help to cook, they help to wash. So everything.” — Timmy So [16:18]
• This mastery and adaptability are why bamboo scaffolding still supports nearly 80% of Hong Kong’s construction.

4. Political Transformation and the Bamboo Ban

[17:15–23:03]

• The post-fire government response is swift: calls to phase out bamboo scaffolding, citing fire safety but also aligning with Beijing’s push for metal scaffolding, which enables the use of mainland-trained workers.
• Timmy So and other industry leaders are called to emergency meetings and presented with an agenda:
  “Roadmap on Adoption of Scaffolding.” — Development Bureau agenda [21:54]
• Despite bamboo being implicated in the fire, many in the city quickly push back, demonstrating that actual cause lay in flammable netting and foam.

5. Public Defense of Bamboo and Political Expression

[23:18–29:22]

• Public outrage emerges over what many see as scapegoating bamboo rather than addressing real safety lapses. Social media erupts with the phrase “bamboo is innocent.”
• Defending bamboo becomes a subtle—but powerful—form of coded protest in Hong Kong’s current climate of restricted speech.
• Quote:
  “Why did Hong Kongers rush to defend bamboo so fiercely?... We realized that this is useless because the problem still is there. And similar thing maybe happen again, right? We didn’t learn the lesson.” — Lo, Hong Kong engineer [25:49]
• The bamboo tradition represents autonomy and local identity—now threatened by Beijing’s policies post-2020 National Security Law.

6. Cultural Loss, Resilience, and Uncertain Future

[29:22–34:26]

• Bamboo’s impending ban resonates as just one more loss for Hong Kong’s unique traditions, joining the demolition of historic buildings and removal of neon signs.
• Quote:
  “Seems to us that those unique things of Hong Kong is being fake out, right? Just like the bamboo scaffold.” — Lo [27:29]
• Despite policy changes, the technical benefits of bamboo mean it may survive in hard-to-reach jobs, at least for now.
• The episode closes with a new protest rap referencing bamboo, echoing the resilience of both the material and the city’s people.
  “I won’t accept this bullshit they go 24 hours engulfed in fire and still I won’t break. Why put the blame on me? One day you’ll miss me when I’m gone. Like bamboo.” — Chan Gip K [34:26]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Wherever a person fits, a bamboo scaffold fits.” — (old saying relayed by Roman Mars) [08:25]
• “Everyone, they forgot how bamboo scaffolding built Hong Kong… At that time, I was very disappointed, very hopeless.” — Timmy So [22:46]
• “We love it. The tradition of bamboo scaffolding, that still means something to Hong Kongers.” — Lo [25:10]
• “Seems to us that those unique things of Hong Kong is being fake out… we are moving like a normal mainland city.” — Lo [27:29]
• “This kind of speech, he whispered to me, it’s very dangerous in Hong Kong.” — Julie Blusey recounting Lo’s words [28:42]
• “I can’t say too much, you know, because of the law.” — Chan Gip K [30:34]
• “So there will be no more new bamboo scaffolders. So I think it’s a little bit too late, but at least someone noticed us.” — Timmy So [32:27]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:23 – Julie describes arriving at the still-burning towers
• 04:04 – Ma Ming claims plastic netting, not bamboo, fueled the fire
• 05:37 – Bamboo’s symbolic place in Hong Kong described
• 08:25 – “Wherever a person fits, a bamboo scaffold fits.”
• 13:57 – Timmy So describes scaffolders’ handoff technique
• 16:18 – The apprenticeship tradition for bamboo scaffolders
• 22:07 – Presentation of the agenda to phase out bamboo scaffolding
• 23:18 – Public pushback and “bamboo is innocent” campaign
• 25:49 – Lo discusses scapegoating bamboo, desire for real accountability
• 27:29 – Concerns about erasure of Hong Kong identity
• 28:42 – Dangers of expressing dissent in Hong Kong
• 30:34 – Chan Gip K on why his song cannot say too much
• 32:27 – The ending of bamboo scaffolder training
• 34:26 – Closing lyrics from protest rap: “Like bamboo...”

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Conclusion

“Bamboo Is Innocent” examines how the fate of a humble building material became a battleground for identity, tradition, safety, and political expression. In the story of bamboo scaffolding—adaptable, enduring, and distinctive—listeners hear the underlying story of a city wrestling with change and searching for ways to defend what makes it unique.

Transcript

[Roman Mars]

The key to running a small business is to be available and reliable. AT&T business helps small businesses stay connected with reliable Internet built to support daily operations. Connectivity keeps everything moving from communication to transactions to daily workflows. AT&T business is designed to be a reliable provider helping small businesses stay up and running without added stress or disruption. Powered by AT and T Business Built to Work Get AT and t [e-mail] if you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break Indeed Sponsored Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them Most. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast that's Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Hiring now then, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored jobs. This is 99% invisible I'm Roman Mars. When reporter Julie Blusey 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 defolksgrant.

[Julie Blusey]

I'd seen the images on the news the evening before. Seven huge residential towers in the Taipo neighborhood of Hong Kong completely engulfed in flames. By the time I landed, 20 hours had passed. I figured the fire would be out and I'd be documenting the wreckage, talking to survivors.

[Roman Mars]

But that's not what she found.

[Julie Blusey]

When I got there, the buildings, all part of this complex called Wong Phuk Court, were still burning. Not smoldering, but burning. Seven towers, 32 stories each and still on fire, still billowing smoke. There's, I guess there's one or two towers that are completely blackened 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 suspect it is a bathroom or kitchen maybe, or maybe guests. And then it's quite serious. Getting serious right now.

[Roman Mars]

Julie was standing in a park just across the way from the burning complex and all around her were people from the neighborhood.

[Julie Blusey]

There was this 73 year old guy called Ma Ming, 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. 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?

[Roman Mars]

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.

[Julie Blusey]

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.

[Edward Jones Representative]

The fire spread quickly due to bamboo

[Julie Blusey]

scaffolding and highly flammable foam. The housing complex was covered in scaffolding made from bamboo, which appears to have helped the fire spread.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Combustible scaffolding should be prohibited, Kayona, meaning we shouldn't use bamboo. This is an unnecessary risk for a catastrophic fire.

[Julie Blusey]

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 Msama think they are nylon, the polyester fabrics. So that makes the fire quickly spread out. 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 unaccounted for. And here we were distinguishing between construction

[Roman Mars]

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 Wongfuk Court might just spell the end of bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong.

[Julie Blusey]

If you've ever seen any images of Hong Kong, you've seen its bamboo. It's just as iconic as Hong Kong's ferries, dim sum restaurants, skyscrapers, and neon signs. The omnipresent use of bamboo scaffolding for construction or renovation jobs.

[Roman Mars]

In Hong Kong, entire skyscrapers are often fully encased in bamboo scaffolding. On any given day, countless stalks of bamboo cover dozens of glass office buildings from top to bottom, enveloping the city's skyline like a veil.

[Julie Blusey]

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.

[Roman Mars]

And for those who haven't had the chance to go to Hong Kong, there's Always this vital action scene in Rush Hour 2 with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.

[Julie Blusey]

The scene hinges on a stunt in which Chan and Tucker maneuver across the bamboo scaffolding on the of the side of a building, and they end up hanging from this one really tall piece of bamboo, which just bends and bends and bends.

[Roman Mars]

Don't worry, Chinese bamboo is very strong.

[Julie Blusey]

You sure, man?

[Roman Mars]

I'm sure. Until finally it breaks. Because, you know, it's a comedy.

[Julie Blusey]

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.

[Roman Mars]

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.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Therefore, I say the bamboo scaffold is just like grow together with Hong Kong.

[Julie Blusey]

This is Lo, an Engineer with over 30 years of experience in Hong Kong's construction industry. He asked me not to use his full name, and Lo thinks the tradition of bamboo scaffolding hasn't survived here simply by accident. Hong Kong, he says, was by necessity built with bamboo.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Hong Kong is a place we don't have much flat land. It's quite a lot of mountain hill, and you can see Hong Kong Island. Most of the ground is sloping, with

[Roman Mars]

a 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.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Therefore, we try to use some. What can I describe? Some very flexible and easy to mobilize solution for the problem. This is all the benefit of bamboo scaffold.

[Roman Mars]

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.

[Julie Blusey]

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 marquees and long bamboo tendrils snaking around windows.

[Roman Mars]

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. From 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.

[Julie Blusey]

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, steel becomes slow and expensive.

[Roman Mars]

And bamboo scaffolding isn't just practical for patching up a building or making repairs. It's often the way skyscrapers are constructed in Hong Kong.

[Julie Blusey]

Hong Kong is famous for its daring and surreal architecture, and Lo 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 an architect

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

requires, Just like a tailor, because every time the angle of the scaffold perfectly match with the building shape. And if no choice we have to use metal scaffold, then maybe we need to use one or two months or more time for preparations. Because everything is heavy by three or

[Roman Mars]

four 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.

[Julie Blusey]

Hey, good morning.

[Timmy So]

Good morning.

[Julie Blusey]

Almost in place 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 3 meters wide, flanked on both sides by tall residential buildings. Two bamboo scaffolders, two. Timmy so and his father, Soji fai, were gathering materials from their truck. Timmy briefed me on the job, so

[Timmy So]

that one will be the building we're working at, the orange color one. But we can walk around to see all the pipes where they are, and we're working at the 14th floor.

[Julie Blusey]

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.

[Roman Mars]

This is probably the single most common job scaffolders 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.

[Julie Blusey]

And this building was no different. But Timmy assured me they'd make quick work of it. You already came here before, or is that what's happening now?

[Timmy So]

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

[Julie Blusey]

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.

[Timmy So]

Yes, everything is designed by ourselves, so it fits most of the environment.

[Julie Blusey]

In Hong Kong, you just asked someone to make it precisely according to your own dimensions.

[Timmy So]

Actually, my father made it by himself, so it's all unique design.

[Julie Blusey]

The elevator only went to the 13th floor. They carried 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 what surely counts as one of the great disappointments of my life. Safety regulations prohibited me from going out onto the scaffolding with them, so I went back down to gawk at them from the alley. We stayed in touch by walkie talkie. Let me see if I can. Oh, yeah.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

There you are.

[Julie Blusey]

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.

[Timmy So]

So every time when I receive the materials from the window, I have to twist the materials. Then my partner can fill it and he'll release the materials from his hand. If he cannot fill it, he shouldn't release the material. So that's how we communicate, and we never drop anything.

[Julie Blusey]

Within a few minutes, Timmy was already well on his way to making what some in the industry call a birdcage, a sort of safe enclosure for repairmen 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 six, and his father is already extending the seventh one while he's lashing the six into place. Probably takes no longer than 10 seconds to connect them. There's some passersby who are wondering what we're so fascinated by. As I watched Timmy and his father build out the birdcage, the alley continued to go about its business. Some cleaners came and went. An employee 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. Ninety minutes later, the cage was finished, just another piece of bamboo scaffolding floating above one of the city's busiest neighborhoods.

[Roman Mars]

Scenes 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.

[Julie Blusey]

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, a bamboo master requires years of apprenticeship. The craft has been passed down father to son, job by job.

[Timmy So]

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.

[Julie Blusey]

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 builder's association. He said the work still challenges him. Twelve years into the job, working together

[Timmy So]

with his dad and at work, I'll call him sifu master. Master?

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Yes.

[Julie Blusey]

Are you a master already, or is that.

[Timmy So]

Yes, I'm also a master.

[Roman Mars]

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.

[Julie Blusey]

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.

[Roman Mars]

But then came the fire, and the world watched as the towers in Taipo burned, covered in bamboo.

[Timmy So]

The search continues for survivors, and those

[Roman Mars]

are horrifying pictures, and police say there are still people trapped inside the building. There are glimmers 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. Being a Hong Konger, it's one of the most horrific things that I have ever. Words can't even describe it. When we come back, the possible end of bamboo scaffolding and what it means for Hong Kong. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. And Claude doesn't just give you answers. It helps you think through the problem and amplifies what you're already curious about. Create your personal command center by connecting Claude to your calendar, emails and tools like GitHub, Jira and Google Workspace. Save time by delegating tasks. Claude can run automated security reviews for your pull requests and fix vulnerabilities. So I wanted to buy this one room cabin that I had my eye on and it had been on the market for years and years and it also had, you know, some things that needed to be fixed and it was in a weird market and I kind of didn't know where to start in terms of my negotiation. So I asked Claude, here's the list price, here's the location, here are the issues with the place. What should be my opening offer. And it broke down all the sort of logic of things and presented a range of what I should offer without insulting the seller and ended up that offer got accepted and I bought the place. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at Claude AI. That's Claude AI at Edward Jones.

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[Roman Mars]

I can't believe they're having a gender reveal for their dog. No, no, no, no. This is a breed reveal.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Oh.

[Roman Mars]

So, yeah, they're finding out the breed

[Julie Blusey]

of the puppy they're rescuing.

[Roman Mars]

So they could just be spending all their money on, like, pet insurance. Instead. We got lemonade for Roscoe, and it covered vaccines, microchipping.

[Julie Blusey]

We saved 90% on vet bills. Oh, here we go.

[Roman Mars]

What do you think beige confetti means? I don't know. That we'll never get this Saturday back. Get a quote for any [e-mail] Peter we're back with reporter Julie Blusey.

[Julie Blusey]

The same day I flew in from Beijing to cover the fire at Wong Phu Court, Timmy so was called in for an emergency meeting at Hong Kong's Development Bureau. It had only been one day since the start of the fire, and I

[Timmy So]

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.

[Roman Mars]

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 cited safety concerns, although some suspected it was a way for Beijing to bring in more mainland construction workers who are trained on metal.

[Julie Blusey]

So going into the meeting, Timmy was bracing himself.

[Timmy So]

And once I arrived the meeting place, there is an agenda on the table, and the agenda title is Roadmap on Adoption of Scaffolding.

[Julie Blusey]

It was a timetable drafted by the Development Bureau for the complete phase out of bamboo scaffolding at all construction sites in Hong Kong.

[Roman Mars]

The official rationale was metal scaffolding is more fire resistant than bamboo.

[Julie Blusey]

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 ban, but only briefly. It was already clear that more than 100 people had died in the fire. And so he says, we resistance felt both pointless and almost inappropriate.

[Timmy So]

So everyone, they forgot how bamboo scaffolding built Hong Kong. And

[Julie Blusey]

yeah,

[Timmy So]

at that time, I was very disappointed, very hopeless.

[Roman Mars]

Shortly after that, the phaseout 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.

[Julie Blusey]

But almost immediately, something unexpected happened. The public pushed back. People began posting videos online, trying and failing to set bamboo alight.

[Edward Jones Representative]

Bamboo has a very high ignition point of at least 260 degrees Celsius. And it is also very difficult to burn.

[Roman Mars]

No one was saying that the bamboo scaffolding hadn't caught fire. Along with everything else in Taupo, it had. The question was whether the scaffolding was what caused the fire to spread.

[Julie Blusey]

Bamboo's defenders said no. 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 site 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 Lo, the Hong Kong engineer. I told him about Ma Meng, the man who defended the bamboo. Even as the towers were still burning in front of us, people were so adamant about it. Like, no, it's not the bamboo. When the fire is even still happening,

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

the bamboo is still burning at the same time.

[Julie Blusey]

Why do the Hong Kong people care so much?

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Why? Why people respond like that?

[Timmy So]

Oh,

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Can I say the people you met, they're smart. They're smart.

[Julie Blusey]

They're smart.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Yeah. Because we live with the bamboo for so many years, right from our child age, we see everywhere is bamboo. We love it.

[Julie Blusey]

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. And instead of looking for the real

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

culprit, therefore we angry about this. And we realized that this is useless because the problem still is there. And similar thing maybe happen again, right? We didn't learn the lesson.

[Roman Mars]

But for many Hong Kongers, the bamboo ban 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 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.

[Julie Blusey]

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.

[Roman Mars]

And increasingly, Hong Kongers suspect that what Beijing wants is to bring the city's cultural identity more in line with mainland China by taking away those things that have long made Hong Kong unique.

[Julie Blusey]

For instance, Lo 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's streets for decades. Beijing had almost all of those taken down also, they said, for safety concerns.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

We don't know why, but seems to us that those unique things of Hong Kong is being fake out, right? Just like the bamboo scaffold. Seems to us that we are moving like a normal magnan city or. I don't know, it's just a feeling.

[Roman Mars]

But just saying these things outright, at 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 independ investigation. A political commentator in his 70s was arrested for criticizing the government's response online.

[Julie Blusey]

The result is that most people in Hong Kong err 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

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

if I need to speech freely, then it will be sensitive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it will be sensitive.

[Julie Blusey]

At this point, Low dropped his voice. This kind of speech, he whispered to me, it's very dangerous in Hong Kong.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

But seems that the government is not working for us, they're working for Beijing.

[Roman Mars]

But at least so far, even if they're not allowed to criticize the government or blame it for the fire, 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.

[Julie Blusey]

Five days after the fire started, I came across this group of young people who were filming a music video. A 26 year old rapper named Chan Gip k, dressed head to toe in black, rapping directly into the camera. I don't speak Cantonese, so I couldn't make out much until I caught the word bamboo. Turned out Chansong 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, Chan had rushed to Tai Po 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.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Because of the fires, we all realized that some people blame the bamboo. So I made this song happen because I think we all know it's not because of the bamboo. Yes. It's just. And it's just about some. I can't say too much, you know, because of the law.

[Julie Blusey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Yes.

[Julie Blusey]

Oh, that's fine. That's fine. Can I quote you saying I can't say too much because of the law or not?

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Yes, you can.

[Roman Mars]

I think.

[Lo (Hong Kong Engineer)]

Yes. Okay. I think yes. Yeah.

[Julie Blusey]

Chan was recording the music video at the edge of Hong Kong, in the village of Soi Tao. The village was holding a festival that only happens every 10 years.

[Roman Mars]

For the festival, they built a temporary bamboo theater. 6,000 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.

[Julie Blusey]

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 theater 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.

[Roman Mars]

Master Timmy so is 38 years old. He assumed he still had decades of work ahead 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.

[Julie Blusey]

The local training center has already canceled classes request required for new bamboo scaffolders. And the government is also providing incentives for all 3,500 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.

[Timmy So]

So there will be no more new bamboo scaffolders. So I think it's a little bit too late, but at least someone noticed us.

[Roman Mars]

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 Ma Mang 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.

[Julie Blusey]

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 phaseout of bamboo scaffolding won't be reversed. Like Timmy said, the new policy is moving forward.

[Roman Mars]

Still, Timmy doesn't think bamboo scaffolding can ever be banned completely, so long as there's an air conditioning unit and a hard to reach spot in a Narrow Alley between two oddly shaped buildings 65 stories up.

[Julie Blusey]

After I left Hong Kong, Chan sent me the demo of the song he'd been singing at the Bamboo Theater. I listened to the lyrics. I won't accept this bullshit they go 24 hours engulfed in fire and still I won't break why put the blame on me? One day you'll miss me when I'm gone. Like bamboo

[Roman Mars]

99% invisible was reported this week by Julie Bluset 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 Hacha Many thanks to Raffaella Andrizi, an architect and photographer in Hong Kong who helped us tremendously with the research for the this episode and introduce us to Bamboo Masters. Timmy so and his father Rafaela 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 Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlsted is the digital director. Jelaney hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Jones, Johnson Vivian Lema, Dawn Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason Talon and rain Stradley and me, Roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM podcast family now, headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of [e-mail].

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