“Gourd Bomb” is a kind of gunpowder weapon originally created by the Yi ethnic group in Ailao Mountain in Yunnan Province. It is a small-sized hand-thrown bomb or rather a grenade with gourd as the projectile body.

The Yi people from Ailao Mountain were the first to create the hand-thrown Gourd Bomb in the 1850s, half a century earlier than the grenade in western countries.

Ailao Mountain produces such essential materials for the gunpowder as the potassium nitrate, brimstone, charcoal, lead, iron and other minerals and the gourds are grown in the local as well, which provide the material conditions needed for the manufacture of the Gourd Bomb.

The original projectile hunting arms used by the Yi people is a kind of open tuck net weaved with bamboo veneer or hemp rope and tied with three 1m-long ropes along its edge. Bundle together the heads of the three ropes with several stones in the tuck net and then hold and whirl the rope heads for three or five circles so that the stones in the net would be thrown 40m or 50m away to strike the bird flock on the ground or in the trees. The stones would be thrown father away when the rope heads of the projectile tuck net are tied to the more-than-two-feet crabstick.

Later on, people used the gunpowder in place of the stones to improve the performance of the primitive hunting arms. The “Gunpowder Gourd” was made by putting gunpowder and lead blocks, iron ore ballast or iron pan fragments together in the dried gourd whose seeds had been hollowed out and slipping the fire weed into the neck of the gourd as the kindling. The fire weed is made out of a kind of local wild plants by peeling the layer of white cotton skin on the back of its leaves, insolating it and kneading it into winceyette, which would then be thrown into the charcoal and hot ash to make the fire weed that is ready to be set off at a fire. When using it, put the gourd in the tuck net, ignite the fire weed, and throw out the gourd quickly. When the gunpowder in the gourd is ignited by the fire weed, the gourd would blow off, and the lead blocks, iron ore ballast and iron pan fragments would flash waywardly with tremendous lethality. It is called “Gourd Bomb” by the Yi people.