Once Upon in Nanjing-Chapter 6 - 5: Methods of Making Fire

"Squeak—"

"Squeak—squeak squeak—squeak—squeak squeak—"

Ban Xia was amused even with her eyes closed; early in the morning, this group of mice was squeaking more melodiously than singing, rising and falling, dynamic and dramatic, almost like a symphony orchestra.

She opened her eyes and the first thing she did was to reach into her messy hair, relieved that no mice had burrowed in during the night.

Getting up from the bed, which creaked under her weight, the noises from the mice underneath immediately ceased. Ban Xia could picture the rodent musicians at their concert, all looking up anxiously at the ceiling, fearful that the dark slab above would suddenly collapse. The girl cleared her throat: "Distinguished guests, I'll count to three, and after three, those who don't leave..."

She didn't finish her sentence before the mice darted out from under her gaze, vanishing from sight within seconds.

"...I will select a few lucky ones to stay for breakfast."

Ban Xia rubbed her hair.

"They sure ran fast."

In the past, Ban Xia had tried to block the mice, searching her room meticulously from top to bottom, sealing every mouse-sized crack and ensuring not even a needle could penetrate. Yet, the next morning upon waking, a pair of glossy black eyes would be staring at her, the pointy wet noses sniffing around.

Ban Xia had sighed to herself then; it was not entirely a bad thing, at least breakfast was taken care of.

Nowadays, Ban Xia no longer tried to obstruct the mice, these little creatures could appear and disappear from the most unimaginable places.

She sprang out of bed, grabbed her clothes from the chair's backrest, put them on, and then circled September 7th on the wall calendar.

When she didn't go out, she'd only wear that one oversized white shirt around the house, with just shorts underneath, baring her long legs as she walked around.

Unless it was winter, clothing was really not necessary.

Actually, Ban Xia was willing to streak, but the teacher stopped her, explaining that clothes not only serve a functional role in terms of warmth and decoration but they also distinguish you from the beasts. If you go without clothes, one day you might blend into this wild world and forget your identity as a human being.

Ban Xia argued, wouldn't that be alright? Humans came from nature and will return to it, we're all hairless apes!

The teacher just laughed and said you're not a hairless ape, you're a girl.

"What's wrong with being a girl?" Ban Xia had asked.

Girls need to be beautiful; you are the prettiest girl in the world, and going without clothes would be giving the world too much of an advantage.

The teacher had said this while playfully squishing and rounding her face.

"Beautiful?" Ban Xia grimaced at the grimy mirror in the bathroom, "I wouldn't know if I'm beautiful or not, I'm face-blind."

The tube of Colgate toothpaste on the washstand had been squeezed flat, and Ban Xia was still stubbornly extracting from it, brushing the last bit of greenish paste onto her toothbrush.

It looked like the toothpaste would be unusable by tomorrow; she would have to cut it open with a knife to scrape a little more out.

First, maintain dental hygiene!

That was one of the rules the teacher had set for her: even if the world ends, you must brush your teeth every day!

The teacher had once taken Ban Xia to scour half of the supermarkets and convenience stores in the Qinhuai District, amassing a mountainous hoard of toothpaste and toothbrushes, all piled in the room downstairs.

Ban Xia figured she had enough toothpaste to last at least twenty years.

After brushing her teeth and washing her face, the girl scooped water from a large bucket in the corner of the bathroom into a plastic basin and squatted down to wash her face.

The built-in ceramic washbasin in the bathroom was unusable, having been broken for years, with a large crack at the bottom that a finger could slide into, so a basin was used instead.

The large red bucket used for storing freshwater was found by the teacher, two of them sitting side by side in the bathroom, occupying half the space—originally where the shower was supposed to be. These plastic buckets were one meter tall and came with lids, perfect for holding freshwater for drinking and general use. Ban Xia would fetch water from these buckets, and on average, one bucket could last three to five days.

After washing her face, the girl carelessly poured the water onto the floor outside the bathroom to wash away the mud and dust.

She didn't need to save water, as Nanjing City doesn't lack freshwater.

Ban Xia's primary source of freshwater was rainfall; Nanjing is a city with abundant rain, having regular precipitation for eight months of the year. Moist temperate cyclones would come from the sea, bringing with them copious rainwater, spanning from March until October, the typhoon season for Nanjing.

After cleaning up, Ban Xia tied up her hair into a ponytail, and it was time to make breakfast next.

"Dad! Mom! What shall we eat this morning?" Ban Xia's mouth was full as she hummed an indistinct tune, "How about porridge? Dandelion porridge? Picked yesterday, it should still be fresh. If you don't say anything, I'll take that as a yes!"

Sure enough, no one spoke.

That means unanimous approval, and dandelion porridge it was for breakfast.

Ban Xia always had a good grasp of her parents' moods.

The kitchen was just a wall away from the bathroom, part of a three-bedroom, two-living-room apartment, one master bedroom, two secondary bedrooms, one living room, one dining area, and finally, a kitchen and a bathroom.

When cooking, it was essential to close the kitchen door and open all the windows to ensure proper ventilation before Ban Xia could carry out the stove laboriously from under the cooking platform.

"This thing is really heavy."

An old-fashioned honeycomb briquette stove, only God knows where the teacher found it—it was half a meter tall and cylindrical. The stove had a ventilation opening at the bottom, covered with a lid, originally designed to burn honeycomb briquettes—short cylindrical pieces that could be stacked one on top of the other in the vertical stove chamber, ensuring that the holes in all the briquettes were aligned. The holes were essential for allowing air circulation, with air entering from the stove's bottom vent, passing through the aligned holes in the briquettes, and finally escaping from the top of the furnace. The airflow was crucial for the coal to burn.

Obviously, Ban Xia currently had no honeycomb coal.

But she had a wall full of firewood.

Each piece of wood was as long as a palm and about as thick as two or three fingers, stacked high against the kitchen wall, piling up to the height of a person.

Ban Xia had split these pieces herself; what Nanjing City had plenty of was wood, with abundant camphor and oak trees lining the streets. She would chop down the trees, saw them into sections, then split them into smaller pieces of firewood, stack them on the balcony to dry. Fresh wet firewood wouldn't burn well, producing thick smoke, so the wood had to be aired out—first on the balcony, then inside the kitchen. The pieces chopped first were burned first, the ones chopped later were used afterward, and by the time Ban Xia needed to burn any piece, it would be dry.

In a world without natural gas or coal, Ban Xia's only fuel sources were gasoline and firewood.

She was reluctant to use gasoline.

So most of the time, she burned wood.

Ban Xia bundled together some thinner firewood and dried leaves into a pile, excellent kindling that caught fire easily.

But kindling alone wasn't enough; it had to be ignited.

How to ignite it?

Ever since mankind harnessed fire, methods of ignition have been constantly updated. Drilling wood for fire was too time-consuming and laborious, so people learned to use minerals to create flints and fire scythes. When generating fire each time was too tedious, people learned to use charcoal to preserve fire. By covering half-burned charcoal with fine ashes, the time it took for the flames to die could be significantly extended. An under-fire is always more enduring than an open fire, and such a fire source could even be carried in a box for instant use.

Ban Xia carefully took out a metal box from under the stove.

This was the fire source.

The eternal fire.

She opened the box, took out a lighter, and with a "click," ignited the fire.

This content is taken from freёnovelkiss.com.