HONG KONG— Perched on a bamboo construction scaffold 18 floors above a swarming expressway, his legs wrapped around a pole, his lips around a cigarette, Ho Siu Leung looks, against all odds, like a man at ease. Mr. Ho has been clambering up and down these creaky contraptions since he was 14. He is now a weather-beaten 54.
But even he concedes there is something nutty about what he does.
”It’s hard work, it’s low paying, and it’s very dangerous,” Mr. Ho said during a rushed lunch break. ”If I slip, it’s all over for me.”
Mr. Ho did slip once, years ago, while erecting a bamboo scaffold on a luxury apartment tower on Victoria Peak, which looms above the city. He fell three stories to the pavement, and woke up in the hospital after lying unconscious for two days.
But he went right back to work.
”Obviously, you can’t be afraid of heights,” Mr. Ho said.
With its swelling population and scarce real estate, Hong Kong has long specialized in vertiginous building projects. As it emerges from an economic downturn, ever-taller skyscrapers are again sprouting throughout the territory.
For all its relentless progress, Hong Kong has clung doggedly to an ancient Chinese construction technique — surrounding its towers in a latticework of bamboo poles no different from those used by builders in China a thousand years ago.
Nowadays, scaffolding is used most commonly to give bricklayers and tile workers a platform on which to do exterior work.
The Chinese mainland has banned the use of such scaffolds on buildings taller than six stories because of fears that the quality of bamboo has deteriorated in recent years. There are rumors that Beijing may soon ban them altogether.
However, in Hong Kong, where bamboo is legal, it is still used in a vast majority of construction projects. The scaffolds routinely rise 50 or 60 stories.
Defenders of bamboo say that, if properly installed, it is as strong as steel, and far more supple. That is handy in a seaport where typhoons periodically lash half-finished skyscrapers, peeling off the scaffolding like an old layer of skin.
”It bends in high winds, while steel scaffolding breaks,” said Norman Foster, the British architect who designed the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters, one of the most celebrated towers in this former British colony.
Lord Foster recalls doing a double take when he saw his building under construction: for all its Buck Rogers modernism, it was erected with bamboo. ”It’s difficult to think of a design concept that has needed less improvement over time,” he said.
Bamboo is not only timeless, its champions say, but elegant. The typical scaffold has slender, hollow rods arranged in a graceful cross-hatch pattern. The poles that support soaring edifices are often no thicker than a man’s clenched fist.
Francis So’s family has built bamboo scaffolds for 80 years. Ask him about the engineering, though, and he waves his hands dismissively. ”Forget about the calculations,” he said. ”Let me tell you about the history.”
From its roots in the monsoon-soaked Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Guanxi, where dense forests of bamboo grow in valleys and on hillsides, bamboo scaffolding has developed over the centuries into a trade, with its own rhythms and rituals.
Young workers serve as apprentices to bamboo masters for three years, washing their clothes and carrying their lunch pails while learning the art of lashing poles. An experienced bamboo worker, Mr. So said, knows instinctively how thick a bamboo pole must be to support a multistory framework above it.
The workers also learn to scamper up swaying scaffolds with long bamboo poles slung over their shoulders. Most wear Chinese-style cotton slippers, and sometimes go bareheaded. Although they are required by law to wear safety harnesses, these are mostly for show.
”What are we supposed to tie ourselves to?” Mr. Ho asked, pointing at the sky above the scaffold. ”We’re already at the top of the building.”
Mr. Ho oversees a crew of seven men, who work eight hours a day, six days a week. They cannot afford to tarry because the tower is rising beneath them at a rate of one floor per five days. No other city builds this quickly.
Mr. Ho’s current project, with seven apartment towers of 46 stories each, guarantees his men months of employment. From their bamboo aerie, they have a jaw-dropping view of the container port in Kowloon.
But to gaze at the marine traffic would violate Rule No. 1 of bamboo scaffolding: Don’t look down.
Looking up can be hazardous as well. Another worker, Ho Kit Man, recalls being struck in the face by a rock dropped by a colleague above him. After a dozen stitches, he was back on the job. But he points proudly to a scar over his right eye.
”It all depends on whether you’ve got the guts to do the job,” said Mr. Ho, whose father, brothers and cousins are bamboo workers.
Like most men on his crew, Mr. Ho migrated to Hong Kong as a child from nearby Guangdong Province. Ho Kit Man and Ho Siu Leung are from the same village. Given that they have the same name, they are likely distant relatives.
Mr. So, whose company employs 400 workers, said they often play up the risks of the job to demand higher wages. At a going rate of about $100 a day, he said, they are already among the highest paid laborers in the industry.
But Hong Kong’s construction industry does have a high rate of injuries and fatalities. That leads Tsang Kam-shing, a gentle man who has built bamboo scaffolding for 20 of his 40 years, to hope his son will not follow in his footsteps.