Pass through the 6-meter-high street lamp pole, break through the darkness and go up, and finally emerge towards the sun! Some time ago, a bamboo tree on the side of the road in Xinchang, Zhejiang Province caught fire. According to reports, local resident Mr. Jia accidentally discovered it when he was passing by with his children.
At that time, I thought it was strange that there was a bunch of "vibrant" bamboo branches growing on the top of the street lamp. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that there was a piece of bamboo growing on the side of the street lamp pole, and it accidentally "stretched" into the hollow part of the street lamp pole.
As you can imagine, there is darkness inside the street lamp pole. In such an environment, it is difficult for most plants to survive.
However,This bamboo not only survived, but also penetrated the entire lamp pole, sprouting lush branches and leaves at the top. With such tenacity and vitality, it was nicknamed "Strong Bamboo" by netizens.
Everything has two sides. While everyone is praising this creature, in fact, from another angle, you can see the amazing destructive power of bamboo.
Its vitality is so strong that it can be described as "frightening".
Once it takes root, it can penetrate every hole. It can penetrate street lights, rocks and pavements, destroy foundations and houses, and can even slowly penetrate the human body and is used as a form of torture.
We demolished a room because the neighbor next door had a few bamboo trees.
What impressed me the most was a British couple who had only lived in their new home for a few months. They demolished a sunroom because of bamboo from their neighbor's house, resulting in a loss of 60,000 pounds.
The first abnormality was discovered in May 2025. They noticed a small group of plants growing at the connection between the sunroom and the garden threshold. They thought it was just weeds, but later they realized it was bamboo growing out.
And it was obvious that the bamboo came from the next door neighbor's house, because they were the only ones with bamboo growing in their yard.
In order to prevent the bamboo from damaging the foundation of the house, the couple hired someone to dig up the garden path, clear out the underground bamboo roots, and then fill it in again.
I thought that the hidden danger had been eliminated, but I didn't expect that it only lasted a few weeks, and the bamboo reappeared in the same place.
Seeing that the plants had spread, the couple had to expand the cleaning area and demolished part of the floor under the sunroom. The scene in front of them still shocked the couple: everywhere they saw were bamboos, with complex and huge root systems, even growing in the walls.
Now the only way to completely solve them is to tear down the sunroom, dig up the floor, remove these pervasive bamboos and rebuild.
Fortunately, the repair cost of £60,000 was covered by the insurance company purchased by the next door neighbor.
There are many similar things happening in the UK, and bamboo has become another new housing crisis after Japanese knotweed.
Compared with Japanese knotweed, the scary thing about bamboo is that many people don’t realize that bamboo can “invade” their houses, causing this ornamental plant to be incredibly destructive in the UK.
The legendary "Bamboo Punishment" The uncontrollable nature of bamboo is largely due to its rapid growth, which can grow 30 centimeters in one day. If the environment is suitable, the growth rate will only be faster.
In addition, bamboo itself has the characteristic of penetrating obstacles at all costs, so some people use the characteristics of bamboo to design it as a kind of torture:
A short platform is built above the bamboo shoots, and the person lies on it and is firmly fixed (some are fixed to the ground in a sitting position, which is more cruel). In the following time, the bamboo shoots are allowed to grow day by day, first piercing the person's skin, then slowly penetrating the body, and finally emerging from the other side, penetrating the body and killing the person.
The entire process is slow and torturous, so it is considered one of the top ten tortures.
This kind of criminal law has been recorded in some travel notes and memoirs in the past, and is said to have been used in Southeast Asian countries, but its authenticity has been controversial.
In 2008, a TV program tested the question "whether bamboo can penetrate the human body." At that time, researchers used ballistic gel with a texture similar to human tissue.The gel was placed on top of bamboo shoots and was penetrated in just three days.
Therefore, researchers believe that bamboo can theoretically pierce the human body.
Although it is theoretically possible, its existence is not necessarily true. The main reason is that there are no conclusive cases of bamboo torture in history.
Many scientists believe that most of the existing information about "bamboo punishment" comes from "oral transmission" by survivors of past wars. Therefore, this kind of punishment is likely to be a unique legend of that dark period.
In short, the above cases are enough to illustrate the power of bamboo.
As long as it grows in the right place, it is a constant source of food and a symbol of perseverance, but if it grows in the wrong place, its destructive power is truly astonishing.