Eats Shoots, and Leaves: Two Women Busted After Uprooting Entire Beijing Bamboo Forest
It's not uncommon to see Beijing dama poking around for fruit and berries in public gardens during the warmer months, but two Haidian women did foragers of China proud earlier this week when they dug up nearly an entire government-planted bamboo forest.
The two middle-aged women, surnamed Yang and Huang, were busted by the Haidian District Landscaping Bureau while uprooting the plants underneath Zizhu Bridge at around midday on May 19, according to QQ News.
Upon closer inspection, the authorities found that the women had bagged 852 prime bamboo shoots, which they said they had intended to eat. Police were dispatched and the women were taken into custody.
At the police station, the women explained that they lived near the bridge and knew of the bamboo planted there, and had waited until it was ripe enough to be harvested. Their DIY approach to stocking their pantries is considered theft of government property and illegal under Chinese law.
The offense was particularly egregious given the high costs that had gone into transplanting the plants from southern China, and the impact of the uprooting, which would stunt the forest's growth for many years to come.
For now, the case remains under further review with no word with how the two bamboo thieves will be charged. If they're lucky, sentencing will be like the growth of a bamboo shoot: very fast.
