Aucklandia: It is to drill wood for fire. According to legend, ancient people "ate wool and drank blood" and didn't know how to cook with fire. There was a man named Sui who saw a big bird pecking at the wood to make a fire (some people said that he saw the forest itself on fire) and thought that there was a fire hidden in the wood. So, after "several attacks and experiments", he created a method of artificial drilling for fire, and human beings got the first fire. This method has been used for thousands of years. This ancient legend reflects the progress from using natural fire to making artificial fire in primitive times in China.
By the Zhou dynasty, the method of drilling wood for fire had become popular. The wood drilled in ancient times will change at any time in a year according to different seasons. Zhou Li Yue Ling stipulates that willow trees should be used in spring, jujube, apricot and mulberry in summer, oak trees in autumn and locust trees in winter. This is called "changing fire" or "getting hotter". Because, the ancients thought: only according to the color of wood, matching with the four seasons, can we get fire, and vice versa. In other words, you have to change the fire every time you change seasons. In the Southern Dynasties, wood was still used to make fire, but the custom of "more fire" was abolished and wood was not changed.
In the Tang dynasty, the method of drilling wood for fire became more popular. Tang Du Fu's poem Qingming: "Walking in a wild goose, the clouds return here, and the family uses green maple to drill the fire." Green maple is maple, which is used to make a fire in spring. Cui Shi: "The boatmen set up a ban on the shore, and the wet oars drill the fire and grind the stars." Wet wood paddles can also make a fire, which means that all wood can make a fire. Interestingly, during the Cold Food Festival, in order to commemorate Jietui, there is a custom of forbidding fire to eat cold food. Therefore, the flame preserved every winter will go out. On Qingming Day, we drilled wood for fire. Every year, the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty held a grand lighting ceremony in Tomb-Sweeping Day, giving ministers new kindling to show his love for them.
Golden elephant: golden elephant, that is, taking the fire of the sun. In the Zhou Dynasty, besides wood, gold was also used to make fires. "Zhou Li" includes: Qiu Guan avoids the torch and takes charge of receiving the open flame from the sun with his "husband". Auspicious is a tool used by the ancients to make a fire in the sun. It is a metal cup with a pointed bottom, which is placed in the sun to make the light gather at the tip of the cup bottom. Put moxa, velvet and the like at the bottom of the cup first, so that it can be lit when it meets light. Therefore, the husband's embarrassment is the golden embarrassment. In addition, "Kao Gong Ji" also recorded the method of taking fire with Suk Kim as the mirror and concave facing the sun. It can be seen that our country had the technology of using optical principle to make a fire four thousand years ago.
Take the Han dynasty for example, it also used gold to make fire. At that time, it was also called Yang Sui. That is, the bronze mirror is used to take the fire of the sun, and wormwood is also used to ignite the fire. In the Song Dynasty, it was still popular to make a fire with gold. Shen Kuo's Meng Qian Bi Tan recorded in detail that when a concave bronze mirror is placed in the sun, all its light will converge inward. An inch or two away from the mirror, the light condenses into a point as big as hemp, and it catches fire when it touches something. In fact, this is today's convex mirror. If we hold this glass mirror and face the sun, the mirror will converge like beans, and then put it under flammable materials, and we can get a fire in an instant. There was no glass in ancient times, so a gold mirror was used. Modern solar cookers are developed from this truth. It used to be embarrassing for the ancients to go out. Because the flint at that time was a pointed cup, the volume was very small, and everyone was girded for use. However, using Xiang Yang to make a fire has a disadvantage, that is, you can't make a fire on cloudy days or at night. Therefore, the ancients were often "golden elephants in Zuo Pei with wooden elephants inside". In this way, if there is sun, we can make a fire with gold flint, if there is no sun, we can make a fire with wood flint.
Strike fire with stones: By the Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties, stones had struck fire. The fire caused by stone knocking is called "Shi Huo". Pan Yueshi: "As annoying as knocking on Shi Huo". Liu Xie once described man's short life as "the fire of the world" in the New Theory of Precious Time. In the Tang Dynasty, there were more people knocking stones for fire. Liu Zongyuan's poem: "When you knock on Shi Huo at night, the mountains are as bright as day". Bai Juyi's poem: "Deep furnace knocks fire to make new tea, and Shi Huo sends this body."
In ancient times, the way to strike a fire with a stone was to hit the stone with an iron piece with "tinder" under it. When Mars falls on velvet and burns, it is caused by "taking the lamp", that is, taking the fire. Velvet, that is, moxa or paper, is made of salt water, which is soft and easy to catch fire. "Taking a lamp" is called "sending candles" in the north. Made of peeled hemp stalks into small pieces, five or six inches long, and coated with sulfur on the head, which will burn when caught in a fire. In the south, hair wax is made of pine or Chinese fir. Gao Shiqi's Tian Lu Zhi Yu records: "Ren Hang carved pine wood into small pieces as thin as paper and coated them with sulfur for fire." In the Song Dynasty, people chopped small cedar strips, dyed them with sulfur and set them aside for later use. When they meet fire, they get angry quickly. People call them "light slaves". Later, some people took this as their profession, but they called it "fire inch". After the method of knocking the fire with stones became popular, there must be ignition materials to cooperate, so the industries of combustion-supporting materials such as "burning candles" and "burning inches" gradually developed.
In the early years of Guangxu, matches were not popular. At that time, the technology of making fire went further, using a tool called "fire sickle". This kind of fire sickle, its skin seam is a bag, Antioch is a blade, and it contains a flint and a ball of tinder. If you want to use fire, take the velvet beans, put them on a stone, and then hit them with iron pieces, which can spark and make a fire instantly. It was an inseparable thing for smokers at that time. Later, matches, fire mirrors, flints, tinder and other things gradually declined and finally disappeared.