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Reviving age-old bamboo raft tradition
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BY the river of Jianhe, the old tradition of making bamboo rafts has been revived thanks to a recent tourist boom, which has brought city-dwellers to the small village of Fanzhao in the remote area of southwest China’s Guizhou Province.
The Yang brothers — Yang Mingquan and Yang Mingqing — from Fanzhao of the Dong ethnic minority are masters of making bamboo raft.
They used to make a living by the river when bamboo rafts were a daily mode of transportation for the locals. But with more roads built to connect the village to the outside world over the past years, the waterways gradually fell into disuse and raft-building became a dying art.
However, when the recent trend of ecotourism in 2015 brought a slew of tourists to the village to get a feel of the old ways of living and see the nature in its original sense, Yang Mingqing, 72, and Yang Mingquan, 68, were called upon to make the bamboo rafts again.
Today, the two brothers are happy to display their skills for the tourists coming to Fanzhao.
They show visitors how to select mature, dried bamboo canes for the raft and how to lash the canes together to form the floor of a raft. They offer tips to anyone who would like to get a hands-on experience of how to navigate the raft along the Jianhe River.
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