Square Bamboo

Square Bamboo

　　Square Bamboo

　　Square Bamboo, one of the Eight Wonders of Xiqiao Mountain. Square Bamboo is a rare and precious ornamental plant under national key protection. It is unique to Xiqiao Mountain. If transplanted elsewhere, within three years, its stalks will revert to being round.

　　If planted in a pot and brought into a home, it may thrive; otherwise, sooner or later it will be crushed under high-rise buildings.

　　Legend has it that there is a story passed down on Xiqiao Mountain.

　　Long ago, on Xiqiao Mountain, there was a woodcutter who fell in love with a beautiful girl. They often expressed their affection through songs. When the woodcutter went to the girl’s house to propose, her mother, disapproving of him as just a woodcutter, stood at the door and rejected his proposal with a song: “Unless wearing flower shoes, don’t stroll the streets; unless wielding a sharp axe, don’t chop wood; unless the heavens and earth of the mountain change, only if bamboo turns square shall you take my daughter.” After hearing this, the woodcutter was determined to make the bamboo square. So he pinched and shaped the bamboo for three years, but it remained round. The girl’s mother betrothed her to an official’s son. As the bridal sedan chair reached halfway up the mountain, the girl jumped off the cliff and killed herself. The woodcutter became a monk at Baiyun Temple, but he kept shaping the bamboo every day. After thirty years, a square bamboo finally appeared. He planted it on the girl’s grave, and the square bamboo grew more and more vigorously.

　　People praised the woodcutter for his steadfast devotion. From then on, the custom of planting square bamboo in front of a woman’s house when proposing gradually spread across Xiqiao Mountain.