Two bamboo stalks side by side, each trailing a pair of drooping leaves — exactly how a bamboo grove looks from a garden path. Bamboo grows so fast that farmers say you can watch it happen, and the scribes gave it a character as light and quick as the plant itself: a few strokes, endlessly repeatable, the same trick you already saw in 林 and 森.
A piece of culture
Books before paper: bamboo strips For centuries before paper, Chinese texts were brushed onto thin bamboo strips (竹简), then threaded together with cord into a scroll — some scholars think that stacked strip order helped fix the habit of writing top to bottom, right to left. A whole book could weigh as much as a person. Confucius reportedly read his bamboo-strip copy of the Book of Changes so often that its binding cords wore through three times — the idiom 韦编三绝, "the binding cord broke three times," still means studying something until it becomes second nature.
Use it in a real word
竹林
zhúlín · zuk1 lam4
bamboo grove — like the legendary "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove" (竹林七贤), free-spirited scholars of the 3rd century; you already know 林