When I was a child, I read "The Little Girl Who Sold Matches" and was very moved, Andersen is great! Warm people's hearts with the temperature of a match, and later read Jin Yong's martial arts, which describes lighting an oil lamp with a fire fold, which is very curious!
Modern people don't even use matches, let alone fire folds.
What exactly is the Fire Fold? An old man told me that it is very interesting to use straw paper to rub, light it and blow it out, isolate the air, take it out when you use it, blow it lightly and burn it!
There is also a special fire fold, which is composed of three parts, fire sickle, flint stone, and fire velvet. The production process of the rich and noble families and emperors is very complicated, which is made by soaking white (red) potato vines in water, taking out and pounding, then soaking cotton, reeds and re-pounding, sun-dried, adding nitrate, sulfur, rosin, camphor and other flammable substances and a variety of spices. Finally, fold the long flat barrel or twist it into a rope, and burn it at night as if there is no fire in the bamboo tube, and when it is used, it is taken out and burned, which is very flammable.
The earliest matches appeared during the Wei and Jin dynasties. Later, a foreigner named Marco Polo spread Chinese matches to Europe, and the West made lighters and "foreign fires".
Let's first look at Grandpa Hour's description in the Fire Catalogue.
Water and fire feed the people, and the people depend on those who live. Materia Medica, everyone knows to distinguish water but does not know to distinguish fire, and there is a lack of literature. The Fire One, the Southern Journey, its horizontal text is three gua, the straight is the fire word, and the image on the fire is also. Its qi travels in the heavens, hides in the earth, and is used for man. The Taikoo Fu people looked up and down, drilled wood for fire, and taught the people to cook food, so that there was no abdominal disease. The Zhou clan used flint to take open fire on the day and the water in the moon for sacrifice. Si Shi was in charge of the government decree of fire, and changed the national fire at four o'clock to save the disease. Qu Li Yun: The Holy King uses water, fire, gold and wood, and eats and drinks in a timely manner. Then the ancient saint kings were in the fire government, between the heavens and the people, and the intentions were also cut, and the future generations were slow? The cut of the fire is eleven kinds of daily moxibustion, which is the fire cloud.
As mentioned above, Li Shizhen believes that water is the biochemical source of all things, and Li Shizhen's previous Materia Medica works did not record fire, only water.
Li Shizhen here as a kind of Materia Medica and record and analyze, is really a unique insight, in Li Shizhen's mind, not only grass, trees, animals, ores can be medicine, as Sun Simiao said: "All things are born, none of them are not medicinal stones."
He believes that fire is the most basic guarantee for human survival, and the discovery of fire is the beginning of human civilization, human beings use fire, drive away beasts and wild insects, roast food, bring light to drive away darkness, use it for warmth, and so on.
Chinese hieroglyphs are all simulated by observing all things.
Later, he made an analogous summary of everything in the universe, and used the thinking model of yin and yang and five elements to think about everything in the universe. The words in the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic are: The south is hot, the heat is hot, the fire is bitter, the bitter is born of the heart, the heart is born of blood, the blood is born of the spleen, and the heart is the main tongue. It is hot in heaven, fire in the earth, vein in the body, heart in dirt, red in color, sign in sound, laughter in sound, worry in change, tongue in trick, bitterness in taste, and joy in ambition. Joy and sorrow, fear over joy, heat and sorrow, cold over heat, bitterness, saltiness over bitterness.
This passage uses the image of "fire" to simulate the "heart" of the human body's organs. I think this invention is very great, and the contemptible people are shallow and cannot understand its mystery.
Li Shizhen made fire the second largest arrangement, which had its purpose, and he believed that fire was the beginning of civilization. If there is water first, and then there is fire, then water and fire can be used. Human beings are inseparable from "fire", and later I will use a large paragraph to explain the history of fire and its contribution to mankind.