The amazing bamboo

We know bamboo is a versatile grass – not tree – but we at Bulong Pulungan sa Sofitel media forum were pleasantly surprised that a 12-inch long bamboo pole placed horizontally on a table could serve as a cell phone sound amplifier. The unique gadget is now on sale online, and is being used in hotels in the south. The inventor, JB Gonzales, has produced hundreds of it and sells it for P600.

The invention is just one of several bamboo products, bamboo “king” Edgardo Manda told us. He showed us slides of buildings, churches, a cathedral in Colombia, lumber sheets, miniature jeepneys, skateboards, portraits of the Holy Family and picture frames. He told us about exquisite shawls, fans, footwear, kitchen utensils and baskets, cans of beer and food items including shoots, the most popular dish being labong cooked in coconut milk, and tea. It’s no wonder bamboo is described by Ed as a wise man’s timber that is stronger than steel (can you believe that?), that is 400 percent carbon emission absorbent, that is cool and beautiful. A show held a couple of years ago had breathtakingly beautiful decorative posts carved by Betis, Pampanga artists.

Ed’s son-in-law, Edgardo Chulbo, has designed a bamboo house for Typhoon Yolanda victims in Tacloban. Frames used are metal poles, and wrapped around them are sawali wallings. The roof is corrugated iron, the floor hollow blocks. The structure costs around P70,000, and Ed, the father-in-law, said, it could stand typhoons – though not in the magnitude of Yolanda. Bukbok is avoided when the bamboo poles are cut “at the right time,” like when they’re three years old.

Ed was still head of Laguna Lake Development Authority when he got together bamboo enthusiasts, among them the architect Bobby Manosa, to form the Philippine Bamboo Foundation, Inc. At the time, he was preaching the gospel of the bamboo, and planting hundreds of seedlings along Laguna Lake banks to prevent soil erosion. He has gone to China and marveled at the millions of hectares being planted to bamboo. Now working as a private citizen, he wonders why his successors at LLDA have not picked up his message.

As president of PBFI, Ed has been raising funds to give lectures and organize seminars, and help people start bamboo plantations, as well as making products for livelihood. A big help comes from the Department of Trade and Industry which trains people in propagation and management of bamboo. There are now demo farms in Dumaguete and Lubao, Pampanga, Butuan in Agusan, Marawi, and Iligan in Lanao del Sur. In Baguio City, St. Francis seminary has a bamboo nursery, a joint project of the diocese of the city (with the support of Bishop Carlito Cenzon) and the PBFI. Lepanto Mines and PCAARD are now planting hectares to bamboo for rehabilitation.

Ed brought Paete wood carvers to Bulong Pulungan. They had carved portraits of the Holy Family on foot-long bamboo poles.

Ed’s parting words: “There’s money in bamboo.” There is so much demand for bamboo products, but there’s a limited supply of the grass. He ticked off Gucci bags using bamboo handles. And the millions of dollars being paid for handsome furniture.

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I received reactions to my column warning people, particularly students, of getting penalized for reproducing textbooks and other materials – an act violating the Intellectual Property Code, or copyright infringement.

A reader who requests his name be withheld, writes:

“Perhaps you may want to know that not only are books photocopied. They are reprinted and passed off like the original. They are sold along Recto Avenue so close to the publishers’ bookstores at half the price. I know this because I am a book author myself. The reprints of my books and those of many other authors are sold brazenly in the area. This unlawful act is so discouraging for book authors like me who spend so much time researching and preparing the books. The violators are so bold because apparently they enjoy the protection of some people in authority. The publishers are afraid to complain because these culprits know where the publishers and their bookstores are and can always cause them trouble.”

Meong Lacao writes that students who photocopy books do not lose respect for the authors. “Students photocopy to save. Photocopying does not diminish or lose a student’s respect for an author – in fact what it does is the reverse. Having read a ‘pirated’ version, the student is then encouraged to know more about the author.”

Next, “Writers do not lose the ability or drive to write because people photocopy books – a writer writes because he wants to write and needs to write (this is why blogs are so famous because writers will write no matter what).”

Third, “Photocopying also happens in other countries – Indonesia, for example. I lived there for seven years and in all my seven years I never saw an original book. All I saw and got from colleagues were photocopied, hard-bound documents. And these were used in business school and an in masters classes.”

“I do not see how stopping photocopying and other such activities – protects to the point of benefiting and improving the life of the property owners.”

“Limiting the discussion to just authors and books – authors are shortchanged by publishing houses and book sellers, not students who photocopy their books. Similar to farmers who do all the work but get shortchanged by middlemen, the publishers and booksellers are the middlemen. And stopping photocopying and buying a fresh book does not make the author richer, it makes the book seller and publisher richer.

Let me ask the question of why should a book in your example cost P350? Who set that price? Why should a great classic book cost P200 but a “bestseller” costs P1,000 – plus plus pesos? The author did not determine that. The bookseller did. I recently purchased a book at a book sale for P60. Its original price at a local bookstore was P390. Assuming the author got paid a lump sum for his work – does the author get paid again for that book sale item? Why the gigantic difference in price? If the bookseller sold that book for P200 or even P150 I am sure students would gladly consider the difference (from P100 for photocopy in your example to P150 for the actual book in my example).

“This is precisely why pirating in music and movies started because of the greed of sellers (not the authors) – when a proper system and price was set by iTunes pirating became negligible because people – artists and consumers – now know the real, reasonable price for music. Books will soon follow – although ebooks have begun to go to this path swell and thus booksellers are beginning to feel the pinch. Good thing too because I believe the money and benefits should go to the real owners of intellectual property – their creators and not all the middlemen who are in my mind half the time useless and just make like difficult for both authors and consumers.”

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