A late-eighteenth century painting of a boy selling joss-sticks and matches

Every time we strike a match, we are using a Chinese invention. The first version of a match was invented in the year 577 AD by impoverished court ladies during a military siege, in the short-lived Chinese kingdom of the Northern Ch'i. (This kingdom was presided over by the psychopathic ruler described at greater length in the account of man-flying kites on page 175). Hard-pressed during the siege, they must have been so short of tinder that they could otherwise not start fires for cooking, heating, etc. The neighboring kingdoms of the Northern Chou and the Ch'en agreed to attack the Northern Ch'i - which consisted of the entire North China plain - from both sides at once. The attack was so successful that the Ch'i was annihilated. Later, the two conquering forces warred against one another and were in turn absorbed in the next unification of China, under the Sui Dynasty (581-617 AD).

Early matches were made with sulfur. A description is found in a book entitled Records of the Unworldly and the Strange written about 950 by T'ao Ku:

If there occurs an emergency at night it may take some time to make a light to light a lamp. But an ingenious man devised the system of impregnating little sticks of pinewood with sulphur and storing them ready for use. At the slightest touch of fire they burst into flame. One gets a little flame like an ear of corn. This marvellous thing was formerly called a 'light-bringing slave', but afterwards when it became an article of commerce its name was changed to 'fire inch-stick'.

There is no evidence of matches in Europe before 1530. Therefore, the Chinese were using them for just short of a thousand years before they arrived in Europe. Matches could easily have been brought to Europe by one of the Europeans traveling to China at the time of Marco Polo, since we know for certain that they were being sold in the street markets of Hangchow in the year 1270 or thereabouts.