PLANTING A SEED

A bamboo-gardening competition aims to inspire students' passion for design innovation, while cultivating young talent to fuel the nation's environmental industries, Chen Meiling reports.

"We'd rather eat without meat than live without bamboo," is how the poem by Su Dongpo - one of the most popular poets of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) - explains the Chinese affinity for bamboo.

The spirit of "constructing a human's homeland by melting into nature" was passed down to some modern-day youngsters, when a group of college students built their own mini bamboo gardens in the heart of Beijing recently.