Photo: Screenshot of Sina Weibo

 
A bamboo weaver in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province has impressed netizens after short videos of him making pot brush, baskets, umbrellas and even bathtubs out of bamboo were uploaded on social media platforms including TikTok. 

In the most popular video that has been viewed 33 million times on TikTok, Pan Yunfeng makes a pot brush out of a section of a bamboo pole. He uses a sharp knife to cut the bamboo into strips on one end while keeping its original shape on the other as the handle. 

Pan’s deft hands and amazing craftsmanship not only earned him fame online, but also helped him repay housing loans. 

Pan was trained to be a bamboo weaver in his teenage years, but when he was ready to work, he found bamboo products were no longer popular. 

Bamboo items can be manufactured by machines, and baskets and bags were replaced by cheaper and more durable plastic ones. Having difficulty making a living with his skills, Pan left his village and became an oil worker in the 1990s. 

Pan also worked as a chef and an electric welder. But in 2019, he decided to retire and return to the village in Hangzhou. Pan saw a bamboo weaving short video and thought he could make even better bamboo handicrafts. 

He learned how to shoot a video and edit it, and later got to know about lighting and settings. Pan’s original plan was to sell products via the internet but he got more than he expected. 

Now that his videos have spread the traditional artistry across the world and given a spotlight to this intangible cultural heritage, Pan has been innovating to make cell phone holders, neck pillows and other fashionable objects out of bamboo. Innovation is indeed the essence of preserving intangible cultural heritage and making it relevant for modern times.