Editing Match (section)

===Early matches===

A note in the text ''Cho Keng Lu'', written in 1366, describes a [[sulfur]] match, small sticks of pinewood impregnated with sulfur, used in China by "impoverished court ladies" in 577 during the conquest of [[Northern Qi]].<ref name="Needham"/> During the [[Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms]] (907–960), a book called the ''Records of the Unworldly and the Strange'' written by Chinese author Tao Gu in about 950 stated:
<blockquote>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 sulfur 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 marvelous thing was formerly called a "light-bringing slave", but afterward when it became an article of commerce its name was changed to 'fire inch-stick'.<ref name="Needham">{{cite book|last=Needham|first=Joseph|title=Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology; Part 1, Physics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oJ9nayZZ2oEC&pg=PA703|date=1 January 1962|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-05802-5|pages=70–71|quote=sulphur matches were certainly sold in the markets of Hangchow when Marco Polo was there|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140102072357/http://books.google.com/books?id=oJ9nayZZ2oEC&pg=PA703|archive-date=2 January 2014}}</ref></blockquote>
Another text, ''Wu Lin Chiu Shih'', dated from 1270, lists sulfur matches as something that was sold in the markets of [[Hangzhou]], around the time of [[Marco Polo]]'s visit. The matches were known as ''fa chu'' or ''tshui erh''.<ref name="Needham"/>