Bamboo slips or sticks first appear in Tang Dynasty records; Duan Gonglu's *Beihu Lu* (Records of the Northern Household) notes their use-specifically, "piercing and subduing [the snake] with a bamboo stick"-in snake-catching. Ma Yongqing's *Lan Zhen Zi* (The Lazy Scholar) from the Song Dynasty describes bamboo sticks stored in a tube, serving as name markers for students, while Su Shi mentions "holding a bamboo stick threaded with red silk" in his poem *He Ziyou Taqing* (In Response to Ziyou's Spring Outing).
During the transition from bamboo-slip documents to printed paper books, "ivory markers" (used to mark scroll positions) were gradually replaced by bone, bamboo, or paper strips to facilitate reading and retrieval; by the Song Dynasty, as reading paper books became widespread, these bamboo markers came to be known as "bookmarks."
The bamboo-stick ferry ticket was invented by Shen Gongzhe, manager of the Tongji Steamship Company. These original tickets measured 20 cm in length and 2.5 cm in width, featuring a pointed top and the company name-"Tongji Steamship Company"-branded onto the wood as an anti-counterfeiting measure. Effective May 1, 2025, the Ruian Feiyun Ferry fully implemented an unmanned ticketing system, resulting in the discontinuation of the bamboo-stick ticket.
