Bamboo Notes

Author: Zhou Zuoren
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-01-01
Features: This book is a volume titled Notes from a Hard Bamboo from Zhou Zuoren's self-edited collection. It includes a large number of prose works by Mr. Zhou Zuoren. These works are rich in content, cover a wide range of topics, and are written with vivid and fluent prose. Though seemingly disorganized, they contain exquisite craftsmanship, fully demonstrating the author's mastery of language. They possess high literary, artistic, and readability qualities, leaving readers with an endless aftertaste. This book is a prose collection by the renowned Chinese essayist, Mr. Zhou Zuoren. It includes works such as Flies in Winter, On Jin Shengtan, Random Notes After Drinking, Like a Dream, and Letters from the Ancestral Hall of Baitang, among others.
The Continued Records of Baoging and Jieshi (Volume 4, Hard Bamboo section) states: "Shanyin County has a city named Hard Bamboo, which was granted to the son of Fan Li by the Yue Kingdom, indicating that Yue has long produced this type of bamboo. Xie Lingyun's Mountain Residence essay mentions, 'Bamboo has four bitter flavors: yellow, green, white, and purple.' Yue also has Wumei Hard Bamboo, Dun Di Hard Bamboo, Diao Shang Hard Bamboo, Xiang Dan Hard Bamboo, You Hard Bamboo, and Shiban Hard Bamboo. The bitter bamboo shoot with a yellow sheath is called Huangying Hard Bamboo. Meng Haoran's poem says, 'Years pass like the aging cypress, while the wind and frost leave behind the withered hard bamboo.'"
Hard bamboo has so many varieties, which I was previously unaware of. The descriptions like Dun Di and Diao Shang seem to imply unbearable hardship, but I don't know how the taste compares to that of Heshan Hui Mountain.
The Jiatai Records of Jieshi (Volume 17, Bamboo section) mentions: "Hard bamboo can also be used to make paper, but only suitable for making silver ingots for offerings." According to the text, in Shaoxing, silver ingots used for sacrifices are made by pasting tin foil with yellow, coarse paper, which may indeed be made from hard bamboo.
When writing my Notes, I chose the name Hard Bamboo for this title.
In the eleventh entry of Notes on Dongxin Master's Bamboo Paintings: "Lidao Yuan's annotation on the Waterways Classic states that Shanyin County has a Hard Bamboo Village, where bamboo grows abundantly and is too dense to be pruned. Could it be that the people of this village are as starved and suffering as this bamboo? Shanyin has been declining lately, and my friend Shu Mingfu, the magistrate of this county, should pity their misfortune and provide relief. I painted this piece, leaving it cold and desolate, to be sent across the river. The frosty buds and snow-green leaves evoke such feelings—how could one not be moved?"
These benevolent words, though, have no relevance to my own thoughts.
June 13, 1924, in Beijing.