Bamboo Is Innocent

A devastating fire put one of Hong Kong's oldest building traditions on trial, but the real story runs much deeper.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

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• 0:35Roman Mars?

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• 1:19Roman Mars?

  Just like museum designers, Acura carefully considers every detail to curate the most engaging, exhilarating, and rewarding experience for drivers. That craft isn't always something you can see, but it's something you'll feel, that flutter in your heart, the engine roars. Every Acura is designed with deliberate intention around how people actually use the vehicles. And that is precision-crafted performance. 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 De Volksgrond.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  I'd seen the images on the news the evening before. Seven huge residential towers in the Taipao 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.

• 2:22Roman Mars?

  But that's not what she found.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  When I got there, the buildings, all part of this complex called Wangfuk Court, were still burning. Not smoldering, but burning. Seven towers, 32 stories each, and still on fire. Still billowing smoke.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  They suspect it is a bathroom or kitchen.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Or maybe guests.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  And then the friend is quite serious. Getting serious right now.

• 3:18Roman Mars?

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

• 3:26Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  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?

• 3:59Roman Mars?

  The eight towers at Taipao 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.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:24Speaker 05

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

• 4:34Speaker 06

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

• 4:45Speaker 01

  But Ma was adamant in his answer. He said, no. It wasn't because of the bamboo that the fire spread so quickly.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  He insisted it was because of the plastic netting that had been draped around the bamboo. That's what caught.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  This time I think they are nylon, the polyester fabrics, so that makes the fire quickly spread out.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  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 materials.

• 5:28Roman Mars?

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

• 5:47Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:03Roman 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.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:33Roman 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.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  The scene hinges on a stunt in which Chan and Tucker maneuver across the bamboo scaffolding on 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.

• 6:59Roman Mars?

  Don't worry. Chinese bamboo is very strong.

• 7:05Roman Mars?

  You're sure, man? I'm sure. Until finally, it breaks.

• 7:12Roman Mars?

  Because, you know, it's a comedy.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:26Roman Mars?

  Other places in China might have their own vernacular building styles, but only in Hong Kong is the sight of construction and maintenance itself part of the vernacular identity. Perhaps no city on earth more proudly displays its own upkeep.

• 7:42Speaker 06

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

• 7:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 8:06Speaker 06

  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.

• 8:18Roman Mars?

  With 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.

• 8:32Speaker 06

  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.

• 8:50Roman 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.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 9:34Roman 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.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:30Roman 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.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  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 requires.

• 10:57Speaker 06

  Just like a tailor, because every time the angle of the scaffold perfectly matched with the building's 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 four times or more.

• 11:20Roman Mars?

  Bamboo scaffolders usually require far less prep. Instead, most of the time, they just show up, eyeball the situation, and get to work.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Hey, good morning.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  Good morning.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Almost in place.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  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 three meters wide, flanked on both sides by tall residential buildings. Two bamboo scaffolders, Timmy So and his father, So Chi Phi, were gathering materials from their truck. Timmy briefed me on the job.

• 12:00Speaker 06

  So that one will be the building. Now, we're working at the orange color one.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 12:05Speaker 06

  But we can walk around to see all the pipes where they are. And we're working at the 14th floor.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:19Roman 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.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  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?

• 12:51Speaker 06

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

• 12:55Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Ooh, oh, it fits perfectly.

• 13:16Speaker 06

  Yes, everything are designed by ourselves. So it fits all the, most of the environment in Hong Kong.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  You just like asked someone to make it precisely according to your own dimensions?

• 13:28Speaker 06

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

• 13:33Speaker 01

  The elevator only went to the 13th floor. They carried their supplies to the next floor themselves. No problem.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  They picked up the bamboo poles and walked up the stairs as if they waved nothing, which, compared to steel, they basically do.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  In which 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.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Let me see if I can.

• 14:05Speaker 06

  Uh, maybe you need it.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, there you are.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:39Speaker 06

  So every time when I receive the materials from the window, I have to trace 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 we, that's how we communicate and we never drop anything.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  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 a repairman 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.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  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.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  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. 90 minutes later, the cage was finished, just another piece of bamboo scaffolding floating above one of the city's busiest neighborhoods.

• 16:24Roman 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.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  I think it's 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.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  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 builders association. He said the work still challenges him, 12 years into the job, working together with his dad.

• 17:31Speaker 05

  And at work, I'll call him Seifu.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Master.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  Master, yes.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Are you a master already? Or is that?

• 17:39Speaker 05

  Yes, I am also a master.

• 17:41Roman 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.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:09Roman Mars?

  But then came the fire. And the world watched as the towers in Taipu burned, covered in bamboo.

• 18:18Roman Mars?

  The search continues for survivors, and those are horrifying pictures. And police say there are still people trapped inside the building. There are clinkers of torchlight 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.

• 18:46Roman Mars?

  When we come back, the possible end of bamboo scaffolding and what it means for Hong Kong.

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• 21:43Roman Mars?

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• 22:20Roman Mars?

  We're back with reporter Julie Bluse.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  The same day I flew in from Beijing to cover the fire at Wong Fook Court, Timmy So was called in for an emergency meeting at Hong Kong's Development Bureau. And it'd only been one day since the start of the fire.

• 22:35Speaker 05

  And I 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.

• 22:52Roman 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.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  So going into the meeting, Timmy was bracing himself.

• 23:15Speaker 05

  And once I arrived the meeting place, there is an agenda on the table. And the agenda title is roadmap on adoption of scaffolding.

• 23:29Speaker 01

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

• 23:37Roman Mars?

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

• 23:44Speaker 01

  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, resistance felt both pointless and almost inappropriate.

• 24:07Speaker 05

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

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 05

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

• 24:25Roman Mars?

  Shortly after that, the phase out 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.

• 24:39Speaker 01

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

• 24:53Speaker 05

  到底是不是火的主要起因？全球的很多网友在网上做实验。 Bamboo has a very high ignition point of at least 260 degrees Celsius, and it is also very difficult to burn.

• 25:05Roman Mars?

  No one was saying that the bamboo scaffolding hadn't caught fire along with everything else in Taipao. It had. The question was whether the scaffolding was what caused the fire to spread.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  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 Ming, 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.

• 26:07Speaker 06

  The bamboo is still burning at the same time.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Why do the Hong Kong people care so much?

• 26:12Speaker 06

  Why? Why people respond like that?

• 26:18Speaker 06

  Uh.

• 26:23Speaker 06

  Can I say? The people you met, they're smart.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  They're smart.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  They're smart.

• 26:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, there is some, because we live with the bamboo for so many years, right? From our child age, we will see everywhere is bamboo, we live it.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  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 Lo 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, instead of looking for the real culprit.

• 27:12Speaker 06

  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.

• 27:26Roman 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 promise. 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.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 28:14Roman 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.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  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 streets for decades, Beijing had almost all of those taken down. Also, they said, for safety concerns.

• 28:51Speaker 06

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

• 29:14Roman 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 independent investigation. A political commentator in his 70s was arrested for criticizing the government's response online.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  The result is that most people in Hong Kong err on the side of keeping their thoughts private, or at least anonymous. Lo, 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.

• 29:52Speaker 06

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

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, it will be sensitive.

• 30:03Speaker 01

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

• 30:11Speaker 06

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

• 30:18Roman Mars?

  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.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I don't speak Cantonese, so I couldn't make out much, until I caught the word bamboo.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Turned out, Chan's song 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 Taipao 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.

• 31:35Speaker 06

  Because of the fires, we all realized that it's some people blame the bamboo.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 06

  So I made this song happen because I think we all know it's not because of the bamboo.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 31:48Speaker 06

  It's just, and it's just about some, I can't say too much, you know? Because of the law, yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 31:57Speaker 01

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

• 32:04Speaker 06

  Yes, you can, I think, yes.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:06Speaker 06

  I think, yes, yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 01

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

• 32:17Roman Mars?

  For the festival, they build 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.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 33:10Roman Mars?

  Bamboo 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.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  The local training center has already canceled classes 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.

• 33:48Speaker 05

  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.

• 34:01Roman 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 Meng 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.

• 34:31Speaker 01

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

• 34:51Roman Mars?

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

• 35:07Speaker 01

  After I left Hong Kong, Chan sent me the demo of the song he'd been singing at the Bamboo Theatre. I listened to the lyrics again.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  "I won't accept this bullshit," they go. "Twenty-four 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."

• 35:48Roman Mars?

  Ninety-nine percent invisible was reported this week by Julie Bluse and edited by Joe Rosenberg, with additional production by Jason DeLion, mixed by Martin Gonzalez, music by Swan Real and George Langford, fact-checking by Graham Hesha. Many thanks to Raffaela Andritzi, an architect and photographer in Hong Kong who helped us tremendously with the research for this episode and introduced us to bamboo masters, Timmy So and his father. Raffaela 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 Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Emmett Fitzgerald,

• 36:33Roman Mars?

  Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Lash Madon, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason, Talan and Rain Stradly, and me, Roman Mars. The ninety-nine percent 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 Ninety-nine P.I. at ninety-ninepi.org.

• 37:11Roman Mars?

  This episode is presented by Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort from start to finish. Enjoy priority check-in and boarding, followed by access to peaceful lounges. Onboard, savor menus created by renowned French chefs paired with wines and champagne selected by Smollet. Stay connected with free high-speed Wi-Fi. Then unwind in a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with a mattress topper, developed with Sofitel MyBed, a signature touch of French hospitality. The art of travel elevated, because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional.

• 37:51Speaker 06

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• 38:20Speaker 04

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