According to folklore survey, artificial kindling is still preserved in Li nationality area. Li people's wood drilling is an ancient artificial fire-making technology with distinctive regional characteristics.
In Baoting, Changjiang, Dongfang and other Li inhabited areas, there are still some old people who have mastered the ancient technology of drilling wood for fire. In an open space in Qixianling Park, Chen Faying, a 60-year-old man from Liugong Township, Baoting, showed us how to drill wood for fire. The old man brought a plank with holes and a stick. When he made a fire, the board was fixed and the stick kept turning under the frustration of the old man's hand. As the old man turned around, he put his dried moss in the fire hole and kept blowing into the hole with his mouth. After a while, smoke began to come out of the fire hole. The old man added banana root fiber and continued to blow. After about ten minutes, the small flame slowly ignited. In this way, the most primitive method of making a fire was presented to the reporter.
The old man said that the Li people's tools for drilling wood for fire consist of two parts, one is the fire drill board, and the other is the drill pipe and bow wood. Only when they cooperate can the fire be put out. The drilling board should be made of dry and combustible wood, the drill pipe should be of moderate thickness, and there must be some skills in taking fire. You can't drill a fire by brute force alone. Mars was invisible when it first happened. If you want to turn the invisible Mars into a vigorous flame, you must have a medium, that is, flammable core wool, banana root fiber, wood wool and so on. And we must lose no time in delivering oxygen in order to make a fire.
According to Wang Haichang, the provincial intangible cultural protection center, it is of archaeological and historical value for Li people to drill wood for fire. The media used to drill wood for fire, that is, flammable core wool, banana root fiber and wood cotton wool, are all organic substances, which are difficult to find during archaeological excavation because of their age, which is the limitation of archaeological data in academic research. As cultural relics, drill boards, drill pipes or bow wood are dead fossils, and they cannot speak by themselves. It is difficult to explain the process of drilling wood for fire by these materials alone, so we can only turn to ethnology related materials as "living fossils" for help. These old folk artists still master the method of drilling wood for fire. The urgent task now is to pass on this skill.