The Flame Stick — A Primitive Chinese Lighter

The flame stick is ubiquitous in wuxia novels. Called huo zhe zi (火折子 or 火摺子) in Chinese, it's the olden days equivalent of the cigarette lighter or flashlight, a convenient, portable, easy to use source of quick light and a means to start other fires (such as lighting a lamp). Rather than carrying big unwieldy torches around (though you do see that from time to time too), characters will often just pull out a flame stick. It's one of those items they always seem to have on them.

She knew something was wrong, so she took out a flame stick.

A flame flared. She went up next to the young girl holding a finely-made, medium-sized flame stick made of copper that could be ignited with one blow.

The deep red flame’s luminosity was limited, but it was enough for her to distinguish two people laying down inside.

“Aiyo!” she cried in alarm and rushed inside.

The young lady went in as well, holding a flame stick. She calmly lit the oil lamp on the table.

Yun Zhongyue, Illusion Sword, Ch.5

The above excerpt is a typical example. You only need uncap it and blow on it to ignite the material inside. Now the flame stick is not a fantastic concoction of the author for convenience sake, it was a real device, and you really did blow on it to ignite. The video below shows the flame stick's construction (it's in Chinese, but you get the idea from the video).

As you can see from the video, paper, cotton, and other flammables are rolled up and placed into the tube. That's where it gets its name, as 火折子 literally means flame fold (in this case in English we would say "roll" instead of fold though).

Basically you ignite the material in the tube, then extinguish it, but not all the way, isntead leaving some smoldering embers you then carry around in the tube so you can reignite it later. The cap in a real one, as seen in the title photo, would be ventilated to allow air to go through and keep the ember going.

Similar methods of carrying embers or live coals exist all over the world. I've heard of Native Americans carrying embers or coals packed in ash inside a cattle horn. Same idea here.

I've translated 火折子 as flame stick, but I used to write fire stick. You could also translate it as flame/fire tube, flame roll, etc. There's no established English term for it. I originally went with fire stick because it's a stick that produces fire. I've switched to flame stick now just because I think it sounds better.

The USB Flame Stick

They have modern versions now which are pretty much just novelty items, a heating element powered by a battery charged via USB.

Like the original kind, you blow on the modern USB version to activate it. I got one for cheap online just to see it in action. Like I said, it's not much more than a novelty. The heating element goes out on its own after a couple seconds, so you have to be quick to light anything with it. I couldn't get a candle lit with it before the element went out, but it will ignite paper easy enough. A few pics of the one I bought below: