Wang Guohong coaches a team of single-bamboo-pole ratters on Chishui River. [Photo: China Daily]

Unlike the beam or the tightrope, a bamboo pole can roll, which requires constant adjustment of the feet.

Fun is what Wang and his teammates crave. There is no money to be made from the activity, even though a local team won a gold prize at a 1999 national ethnic minority tournament.

But bamboo has been good for the people of Chishui. About half of the city's wooded area, or 70,000 hectares, are covered with the plant.

Because bamboo is a highly renewable resource - one of the species grows 1 m a day - an annual harvest of 4 million poles has made it a major industry.

"Some families rent 150 to 200 hectares and earn more than 100,000 yuan ($14,630) a year," city official Zeng Qiang says.

Xinyu Bamboo Company employs 300 people and brings in annual revenues totaling some 100 million yuan.

Its bamboo products include the mundane (chopsticks and cutting boards), the unusual (floor panels and furniture) and the fancy (bamboo books that recall the pre-paper era of Confucius and ancient classics).

And guess what? Bamboo can now be processed into paper.

"Don't worry about cracking or rotting. Our products are sold all across the country and even to India, Poland, South Korea and Japan. We have squeezed all liquid and sugar from the bamboo," manager Li Xianhong explains.

According to Li, Xinyu has six product lines featuring 250 products. It uses 0.8 million to 1 million bamboo poles a year, putting a total of 12 million yuan into farmers' pockets.

That's something Li Litai could have been proud of.

Li was a Fujian native who went to Guizhou in 1755 as a migrant worker. He made some money, bought a house and some land, married and settled down.

In 1769, he went back to his hometown to persuade his mother to move with him to mountainous Guizhou. But she didn't want to leave.

As a souvenir, Li dug up four local bamboo seedlings and carried them with him on his way back - a way of remembering each of his siblings.

Three of the seedlings survived the 4,000-km odyssey. He planted them in his backyard, and pretty soon his house was surrounded by bamboo groves.

Realizing the benefits offered by this species, called nanzhu, villagers came for seedlings, which Li generously gave away. Decades later, whole mountains were covered with nanzhu bamboo. Today, 20,000 hectares of this giant bamboo grows where Li used to live.

Chishui, as a city, is the second largest grower of bamboo, right after all of Fujian province, Li's hometown. Today, Chishui people consider Li "the father of nanzhu bamboo".

Back at the river, Wang Guohong is walking back and forth on a pole as if it were a dancing rope. Sometimes he is ankle-deep or knee-deep in water, but the poles (the smaller one in his hands) are like his magic wand. They enable him to wow a la "bathing beauty".

Chinese call a wide expanse of bamboo "the bamboo sea". It sways in the wind, evoking an infinite variety of poetic moods. Even submerged in water, bamboo can sway and hold you steady.