The story of Andersen's bellows.

There is no story about bellows in Andersen's works. I found one online, and I don't know if it is the story of the bellows you are looking for.

The story of bellows

I spent my childhood at my grandmother's house in the country. I still remember that every morning, the "snoring" sound from the kitchen always wakes me up from my sleep. It's the sound of grandma cooking and pulling the bellows. As the bellows twitch, clouds of smoke from the chimney on the roof will curl up into the sky.

The bellows mentioned here are commonly used by farmers in the past. It is a rectangular wooden box, more than two feet long and six inches square in cross section. Two parallel pull rods are vertically inserted from the outside of the box, one end left outside the box is connected with the handle, and the other end inserted into the box is connected with a square wooden board, and the four sides of the wooden board are tied tightly with a circle of chicken feathers to play the role of a cylinder piston. There is also a small air outlet at the front and rear ends of the box, and the inside is close to a small movable board, which is equivalent to the air valve in the cylinder. The operation process is that when the pull rod pushes the piston plate into the box body, the small air outlet at the front is opened, the small air outlet at the back is closed, and air is blown out from the vent on the left side of the bottom of the box body. When the pull rod is pulled out, the small air outlet at the front is closed and the small air outlet at the back is opened, which also pushes the air out of the box. When the pull rod is pulled repeatedly, the bellows will continuously deliver airflow into the furnace cavity and ignite the stove fire. The whole bellows can't find half a nail, it's all wooden nails or mortises, and its ingenious structure fully embodies the wisdom of our ancestors.

In the 1970s, in addition to straw, branches and leaves, cooking in rural areas also used a kind of fuel called "pulling chaff" (dialect homonym), which was the chaff that fell after millet was ground into rice. Whenever grandma is short of hands under the cooking stove, she always asks me to help make a fire. Remember that you don't need to pull the bellows to burn the straw, just roll the straw into a small ball and put it in the stove, then pull it away with the tongs, and you have to burn the chaff with the bellows. You need to pull the bellows on the side of the cavity with your right hand and throw it at the cavity with your left hand. Under the constant encouragement of bellows, the chaff will be fully burned by the wind. Pulling the bellows is very tiring, and the arm will be sour after a long time. When it comes to wind helping fire, we have to mention another kind of small stove, which is called "furnace-containing" in Putian dialect (dialect homophonic). It is smaller than the current rice cooker and can be moved at will. The difference is that there is no bellows when the furnace is burned, but a fan is used to fan the air directly at the vent of the furnace bottom. There is also a kind of bamboo-made combustion-supporting tool called a fire blower, which runs through all cylinders, leaving only a small hole at the joint bone at the end, and then blowing from the mouth at one end of the opening, and the gas will flow out from the small hole at the end. When the stove chamber is short of oxygen, firewood only emits white smoke and does not burn. At this time, as long as the end of the fire blowing pipe is put into the furnace cavity and the firewood is blown, the firewood will be rekindled.

Bellows are not only a good helper for farmers to cook, but also an indispensable tool for handicraft production. In my hometown in the 1970s, there was a tinkling blacksmith shop, next to a stove burning red coal and a roaring bellows. Bare-chested master and apprentice, one is working while the iron is hot, the other is pulling the bellows, and the work is very hard. In the last century, the function of bellows was fully exerted. Because melting molten iron requires a high furnace temperature, the large bellows providing oxygen has become the key to steelmaking. Therefore, people take turns to constantly pull the bellows in order to make the best molten iron. Young people were the main force in steelmaking. During steelmaking, a man and a woman take turns to pull the bellows. After a long time, they even pulled out an emotional spark and became a love story.

In the push and pull of bellows, there is a profound philosophy of life. Here are two metaphors. First, no matter how the bellows moves, the space capacity in the box remains unchanged. It seems that encouraging bellows creates endless wind sources. In fact, as far as the bellows itself is concerned, it has not got any tangible results and is still empty. Life is like a bellows, no matter how hard you try or hold it, you will eventually return empty-handed. Secondly, as the bellows twitches, it sucks in and exhausts at the same time, which is called gain and loss. Isn't life like this? When you are happy to get something, you lose something else; When you feel sad about losing something, you get other compensation unexpectedly. Therefore, people are advised to look down on everything in the world, regardless of the gains and losses of life, and those who are satisfied are happy.

Bellows not only contains the philosophy of life, but also endows it with a strong local culture. From the name bellows alone, it has dialect characteristics. For example, Putian dialect calls bellows "furnace call" (dialect homonym), and pulling bellows is said to be "furnace call". People are used to calling snoring in sleep "dragging the stove", because snoring makes the same "snoring" sound as bellows. When I was a child, I liked to "mop the stove", because when the bellows rang, my grandmother must be cooking something good for us. As for the well-known two-part allegorical saying "Rats drill bellows-both ends suffer indignities", that is to say, someone is caught between two contradictory sides, and both sides are unhappy.

After entering the 1990s, with the widespread use of liquefied gas stoves, the old stoves bid farewell to farmers, and the bellows also lost its due role. Bellows can only be seen on some special occasions, such as the Lantern Festival in rural areas, and old bellows are used to cook cauldrons in the village temples. Thousands of years of traditional cookware gradually faded out of people's sight in the push and pull of this bellows.