Gunpowder and Fireworks: The Stories Behind the Brilliant Night Sky

Hi everyone, welcome to Cold-Knowledge Blind Box. I'm your host, Qiao Yulan. The Lunar New Year is just around the corner, so let me wish all the grown-ups and kids a happy new year in advance! Apart from red envelopes, what is everyone's most anticipated part of the New Year? I'm sure it's setting off fireworks. That's right, today Cold-Knowledge Blind Box is talking about the stars that light up the brilliant night sky: the stories behind fireworks and gunpowder.

Ever since February arrived, I've been in full Spring Festival mode. The symptoms are that I can't focus on work and all I can think about is getting the holiday started so I can go play with firecrackers, hehe. Hmm, why did I use the word "again"? Don't tell me you've been sneaking off to set off firecrackers in Shenzhen, where fireworks are banned!

Of course not. This New Year's Eve, I drove my ET5 with some friends to a seaside villa in Huizhou, and we set off fireworks on the beach to our hearts' content, hehe. The scene was fantastic. The whole beach was lit by displays competing for attention, one after another, so the sand was no longer dark but illuminated by wave after wave of dazzling fireworks in the sky. As the midnight bells rang, fireworks of every color lit up everyone's faces, and we all welcomed the New Year together. The feeling was simply wonderful!

That's right: when we talk about the flavor of the New Year, there's the smell of the New Year's Eve dinner, but there's also the smell of gunpowder hanging in the air after fireworks are lit, and the sounds of lion dances and firecrackers. An ancient poem says: "With the crackle of firecrackers, the old year is gone; the spring breeze brings warmth to the Tusu wine."

But I've had a question since I was a kid: why are firecrackers also called 爆竹 (baozhu)? Gunpowder and bamboo shouldn't have much to do with each other, right? You're right. Bamboo was neither a tool nor an ingredient for making gunpowder. If you really want to link them, the only connection is that they sound alike, both going pop-pop-crack very loudly. Then the question follows: does the New Year really have to make noise? Yes. The point of the New Year is to drive away "Nian," a wild beast, or in other words, evil things, by making loud noises to scare them off. The ancients came up with all kinds of ways to create noise to drive away evil spirits and bad luck. Today we're going to talk about the stories behind firecrackers and gunpowder.

In ancient times, before gunpowder existed, people accidentally discovered that bamboo made a very loud sound when heated. It didn't require the effort of beating gongs and drums, and it could also be used to make a fire for warmth, so the method spread. Even today, people have kept this name, and firecrackers are still called baozhu, or "exploding bamboo."

By the 7th century, the fate of baozhu was about to be taken over by firecrackers made with gunpowder. This was the early Tang dynasty. Thanks to a series of reforms by Emperor Taizong, Li Shimin, the era became known as the "Reign of Zhenguan." The country was prosperous and encouraged the development of diverse cultures. For a time, Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism all flourished side by side, much like the "contention of a hundred schools of thought."

The Tang dynasty was the dynasty of the Li family. Coincidentally, Laozi, the founding patriarch of Daoism, also had the surname Li, and his courtesy name was Boyang. So naturally, the Li dynasty held Daoism in high regard. Add to that a prosperous country with abundant food, and people naturally began to seek spiritual fulfillment. The Daoist community grew larger and larger. They gathered together, sometimes sitting to discuss the Dao, sometimes holding debate contests. But the most important thing was: alchemy.

That's right. In Tang China, there were too many wealthy people, from the imperial court down to the common people, and everyone coveted the magical power of immortality. Do you know why Tang Seng in Journey to the West is so popular? It's because he has a real-life prototype! If you want to cultivate immortality, you have to make elixirs! The massive demand for eternal life led many Daoist priests to become obsessed with alchemy.

At some point, a certain recipe became popular among Daoist circles: mix saltpeter, sulfur and charred honey locust seeds, then ignite it, and it burns violently. No one knows who first discovered this phenomenon. Some say the method was passed down from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. If you want history to remember what you did, you must write it down! For example, the Tang alchemist Qing Xu was the first to record the original method for making gunpowder in The Secret of the Golden Elixir of the Supreme Ancestor, which allowed later generations to make gunpowder using the same formula. And so, gunpowder was no longer exclusive to the small circle of Daoist priests. It was soon adopted by ordinary craftsmen, who used it to make firecrackers for celebrations during the golden age of the Tang dynasty, adding a festive atmosphere.

At this point, someone might say: how typical of the peace-loving Chinese civilization, not using such a powerful thing for war, and instead making fireworks to celebrate festivals? Lu Xun had a similar view, and once sighed: "Foreigners use gunpowder to make bullets to defend against enemies, while the Chinese use it to make firecrackers to honor the gods."

Although Lu Xun's original intention was to spur his fellow countrymen to strive for self-improvement, his words were somewhat one-sided. The Chinese actually used gunpowder to develop weapons very early on. For example, during the Song-Jin Battle of Caishi in 1161, the first explosive gunpowder weapon in history, the "Pili Pao" (thunderclap bomb), appeared. When it exploded, it released large amounts of smoke, hiding the movements of one's own army. And in 1259, during the Battle of Diaoyu Fortress, the Southern Song army even used cannons to kill Möngke, which temporarily halted the Mongol cavalry's plan to conquer Eurasia single-handedly.

However, what may have truly caused the difference between Eastern and Western weapons comes down to two things: city walls and armor. The East did not have very hard man-made fortresses or towering stone city walls. In most cases, attackers could capture a city with simple siege ladders or a siege strategy, without needing huge siege engines. Taking a step back, even if siege engines were truly needed, in most cases trebuchets were already enough to tear a small gap in the wall, so there was no need to develop cannons to replace trebuchets.

Eastern wars generally mobilized large numbers of people, and many soldiers were themselves farmers who could not afford expensive armor. So bows and arrows were more than enough. Before the invention of bullets, early firearms were as slow to load and fire as snails. A competent archer could shoot 20 arrows in one minute, while a musketeer had to load gunpowder into the barrel, then insert the projectile, then raise the gun to aim. Getting off three shots was considered pretty good.

The West, meanwhile, went wild on the skill tree of heavy artillery. After all, Europe had so many hard fortresses and castles. For example, the walls of Constantinople were 12 meters high, about as tall as a four-story building, and as much as 5 meters thick, about the thickness of two floors. To breach them using human-powered trebuchets, and transporting the stones, would have consumed an unimaginable number of craftsmen. And you couldn't ensure that a stone thrown into the air would land squarely on the wall.

Faced with this kind of problem, the demand for powerful cannons arose. The cannons of that era were, in plain terms, ways to increase the speed of the stones while ensuring accuracy. Ten stones fired at a weak point in a city would eventually breach it.

To launch stones with enough force, you needed to make iron that could withstand the corresponding chamber pressure. To aim accurately, you needed to work hard on mathematics and ballistics. So iron-casting technology kept improving, and by the 16th century, it was possible to cast a barrel in a single piece. Firing cannons thus became safer, and their firepower greater. At the same time, the hardness of personal armor and shields kept increasing with advances in ironwork, and bows and arrows began to fall short.

Meanwhile, modern ballistics was gradually taking shape. In 1537, Niccolò Tartaglia published the first treatise on shooting theory, using the logic and language of mathematics to describe the process of firing.

While the Western military was gradually adopting scientific reasoning for argument and deduction, the East was still explaining and discussing weapons on mystical foundations. After seeing Western firearms in the Age of Discovery, Xu Guangqi and others began translating large numbers of Western books into Chinese. This led to Sun Yuanhua introducing a book about Western military technology: Xi Fa Shen Ji (Western Divine Machines). Unfortunately, China at the time did not have a system of basic scientific thought, and had to rely on the theory of yin and yang and the five phases to explain things.

On top of that, Europe itself did not yet have unified units of measurement. Once the methods were brought to the East, the errors from converting units were so large that they were practically unusable. If you really made firearms with such methods, they would almost certainly explode in the barrel once they reached the battlefield. Soldiers would immediately abandon these far-fetched experimental products, since no one wants to gamble with their own lives.

Because there was no empirical scientific knowledge, ordinary scholars generally lacked the ability to describe weapons accurately, and often exaggerated wildly in their writing.

The Book of Jin describes an early bomb called the "Thunder-Shaking Bomb," saying its explosion could be "heard a hundred li away." The Wubei Zhi records a handgun called the "Single Flying Divine Fire Arrow," which could injure enemies three hundred paces away using only three qian of gunpowder. Enemy men and horses were shot straight through, and one shot could even pierce several in a row.

Of course, the firepower of these scholarly "big talk" weapons quickly revealed its flaws once frontline generals used them. Take the handheld "Divine Spear" firearm, for example.

Qiu Jun claimed it could shoot a hundred paces, and that enemies would already be hit by the time they heard the gunshot. But when it reached the hands of Qi Jiguang, who faced real combat tests, he found that the arrows it fired flew crookedly and wobbled, and often shot out backward, almost useless.

As this gap grew wider and wider, modern times saw East and West bring their respective weapons to battle. The tragic difference in battle results led Lu Xun to say those words of frustration at how the iron never became steel. If you don't understand the underlying principles of things, temporary tricks and clever shortcuts may win short-term gains, but sooner or later they will be exposed.

Well, that concludes this little historical story behind gunpowder and fireworks. If you have any other knowledge you'd like to hear, you can also open the NIO app, go to the Friends section, find the NIO Radio Shenzhen city community, and come share the cold facts you like.

举