Luis Marden - Fly-rods and Bamboo

Fly-rods and Bamboo

Marden was an avid fly-fisherman, which led to his interest in bamboo, of which finer fly rods are made. This love led him to the bamboo groves of China's Kwangtung Province, thereby becoming, in 1974, the first National Geographic representative since the Communist Revolution of 1949 to return to this country. Marden observed and photographed the cultivation and processing of Tonkin bamboo in its restricted growing area in southern China.

This assignment produced the article "Bamboo, The Giant Grass" (1980). "Raw material for implements of peace and war, this botanical cousin to rice, corn, and Kentucky bluegrass may be the world's most useful plant," Marden would write. Marden also recounted the under-the-table maneuverings he engaged in for entry to Maoist China.

Marden made his own bamboo fishing rods. In 1997, he published his second book, The Angler's Bamboo, which not only describes the cultivation and processing of Tonkin bamboo, but also traces the history of the split-bamboo fishing rod.