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 A thousand years ago, Korean monks made medical salts with bamboo called Chukyom. Dissolved in water, bamboo salt is still taken as a curative for stomach ailments today.Dr. Sang-Park of the Nambu Forestry Experimental Station in Chinju, South Korea, has pioneered the use of bamboo charcoal as a iltering agent for Jinro Soju, the most popular liquor in Korea, distilled in part from sweet potatoes. He is now studying bamboo sap as a potential health drink and skin moisturizer.

It's the same story of progress in Thailand, where Somyot Tasalee's factory in Mae Sot, in the northern province of Tak, makes compressed barbecue charcoal by recycling 15 tons of bamboo waste daily. The by product comes from 300 villages in surrounding provinces, where people make handicrats, chopsticks, toothpicks, and other products.

With the push to harness bamboos unique qualities on an industrial scale for new products and uses, many bamboo lovers fear old skills are being lost. But artistry still has its rewards.I see this in a courtyard in Thailand's Chon Buri province. Pradup Suskai sitting with a dozen other women, weaving ine bamboo strips into extraordinary handbags - each of which can sell for $200 in Japan. "It takes up to ten years to learn these skills" she says. So perfect is the women's work that one customer complained the handbags did not look handmade.

As the warm afternoon light kisses the feathery, nodding groves across the Wos River in Linda Garland's Bali estate, i think of the countless artists and poets captivated by bamboo's haunting timelessness. Garland, meanwhile, ponders the modern industrial future planned for bamboo while telling me there should always be room to appreciate its ancient arts and simple beauty.