Power plant: bamboo(3)

Anji Cheng Feng Bamboo Products Co Ltd's founder Hu Gongnian demonstrates bamboo's impact on poor farmers.

Hu never went to school but became rich and successful from bamboo.

His company produced the pillars for the German pavilion at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Hu's career development mirrors that of Anji's bamboo industry.

"I've loved bamboo since I was a child," he says.

He apprenticed under a bamboo carpenter at age 17 and became a middleman at 20. He started making chopsticks and toothpicks in 1995. Ten years later, he began producing flooring and shifted into furniture in 2007.

Cheng Feng earns about 20 million yuan a year, employs 70 workers and its factories cover about 1.33 hectares.

"Bamboo is harder and more elastic than wood, but it is cheaper," he says.

"It has made Anji rich. The global market is growing. It benefits the farmers most. And my business is getting bigger."

Anji was not only the first place in China to industrialize bamboo but also has developed its most extensive tourism industry around the grass.

Bamboo lures more than 500,000 tourists to the area a year, generating 500 million yuan for the county. They come to hike the forests, eat bamboo in rural restaurants and buy bamboo handicrafts, Tianhuanping's deputy mayor Ye Yan says.

Many visitors come to see the filming sites of such blockbusters as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Banquet and The Matrimony. There's even a small museum dedicated to films shot in Anji's bamboo forests.

And the bamboo industry poses little risk to the environment that supports its plantations, Xuan says.

Manufacturing products with it requires few chemicals.

"Bamboo flooring doesn't use the toxic substances other flooring does," Zhejiang Bamboo Industry Technology Co Ltd general manager Xu Guowen says.