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Reviving the ancient art of incense making
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CHINA’S time-honored arts and crafts traditions are being kept alive by a fresh crop of talented, young artists and designers. Across Hangzhou, these emerging artisans are adapting these ancient cultural products to suit modern tastes. Shanghai Daily’s Hangzhou Special is here to put the spotlight on these young innovators.
USUALLY, art is either for your eyes or ears, but for Li Changshu, it’s for your nose, too. For thousands of years, incense has been used in China not only for religious ceremonies but as an artistic element in folklore.
“Painters use a brush and musicians use instruments to express emotion and thoughts, and I use incense,” Li, who makes incense, said. “Smoke from incense is my rhythm.”
Li, 42, now based in Hangzhou, is one of the few incense makers who insist on hand-crafting incenses with natural materials.
Since Neolithic times, Chinese people burnt stones and wood for aromatherapy. Once more spices were introduced to the country through the Silk Road, incense was widely used in daily life. They gave clothes a better smell and were used in traditional medicine, meditation, and religious rituals.
To use of incense was considered elegant. During Song Dynasty (960-1279), appreciating incense was considered one of four “graceful daily things” to do, along with tasting tea, arranging flowers, and arranging paintings on walls.
Over the centuries, the art almost vanished in China.
But in Japan, the so-called Kodo remained popular and eventually spread to Taiwan, from which it returned to the Chinese mainland several years ago. Today in China, the art is called xiang dao, meaning “skill of making incense.”
Li is one of those revivers. More than 10 years ago, he read a book on incense, and decided to create his own. From that point on, he couldn’t stop.
With the help of books, he taught himself, and kept experimenting with high-quality ingredients, which he often found during trips to southern China and South Asia.
In 2012, he quit his designer job and set up a workshop and store called San Yi Xuan near Baima Lake, Hangzhou.
Similar to essential oil originated from the West, incense controls stress.
“Color, shape, sometimes scenes come to head,” Li explains.
To make incense, Li first creates a formula. Then he processes the raw materials, grinds and compounds them, fits them in the right shape and cools them in a cellar before they are packaged. Sometimes, they have to be exposed to sunshine, or frozen with snow.
“To make one type of incense, I need at least three months,” Li says. With modern technology, he could speed up the process, but he says that he’s never satisfied with the result and has decided to rely on the traditional methods.
“It is part of the process: to wait for good material, for snow or for sunshine,” he says. Some incenses have taken him a year to make.
“I used to be a hasty person, but through making incenses, I became patient and mild. More and more, I believe that it was my destiny to become an incense maker.”
Li not only follows old formula from ancient books, but, just like the olden masters, he experiments and works on new compositions. He sources inspiration from almost anything — a good piece of music, a pretty flower, or a new friend.
On customers’ orders, he will create incense uniquely for them, made to suit their occupation, age, gender, temper and the five elements, a fivefold conceptual scheme that explains things such as the interaction between internal organs, and the properties of medicinal drugs.
“A good incense should be suitable for the person, which isn’t about how expensive it is,” he says.
San Yi Xuan sells incenses from 10 yuan (US$1.52) to 10,000 yuan.
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