Flint Man (Suìrén Shì 燧人氏) = a noble youth
A Sick Old Man
This is the story of a person known only as Flint Man (Suìrén Shì 燧人氏) because we do not know his real name.
Long, long ago, people didn’t know how to use fire, let alone how to light fire. The food they ate was cold, and at night they had no light but that of the moon and the stars and no way to protect themselves from attacks by wild beasts.
Once there was a great storm, and lightening struck many trees, which fell and sometimes burned. When the storm was over, men found the smoldering trees, and sometimes beneath them the bodies of animals that had been crushed when the trees fell and cooked in the heat of the fires.
And thus people discovered that cooked meat tasted better than raw meat, so they took away some burning wood and sought to protect it in order to create cooking fires. They learned that it could even frighten away wild beasts.
The people took turns guarding the burning wood so as to be able to create fire from it when needed, and they decreed that, should a guardian let the fire go out, his penalty would be to go out into the wilderness to seek a new burning tree.
One day it was the turn of a sick old man, who fell asleep and let the fire go out. But as he was too old and too sick to go in quest of new fire, a noble youth stepped forth and volunteered to go in his place.
The way was cold and difficult, and the noble youth had no better idea than anybody else did how he was to find new fire. When he had been on the road for several days and was particularly cold and hungry and thirsty and tired, he fell into a deep sleep. He dreamt an old man came to him and told him to go to the Land of the Brightness of Flint (Suìmíng guó 燧明国) and look for the flint tree. Then the old man disappeared.
The noble youth woke up and looked around. He knew now where he must go; but he didn’t know where it was, which didn’t help a great deal in getting there. He walked and walked, and the day passed into night, and the forest grew dark and dense. Finally he could see nothing at all. And then, a bit ahead there were gleams of light. As he drew close to them he saw that they came from an enormous tree. On each huge spreading branch there sat a bird, with great claws and a short sharp beak, pecking at the tree. And each time a beak would hit the tree, little sparks would fly up.
The noble youth knew at once that this had to be the flint tree. He climbed up and broke off a bit of a branch and tried striking the tree. Sparks flew, although no real fire. He experimented and experimented, and found that he could drill at the tree with branches from other trees and they would eventually burst into flame. He was delighted.
The noble youth managed to break off a branch of the tree and to drag it back to the village. He taught the villagers how to use it to make fire whenever they pleased. And so now we are able to heat our houses and cook our food and keep wild beasts from our homes.
To celebrate the noble youth’s contribution, they called him Flint Man, and it is by this title that he is known to us today.