Retiree pursues the cachet of sachet
Print Edition
CHEN Xingzhi is a “bag woman” of aromatics.
The 71-year-old makes about 60 percent of the sachet bags sold in Shanghai. The Dragon Boat Festival is her prime season for sales.
Unlike many varieties filled with perfume compounds, hers are authentic to tradition. In shapes of hearts, dumplings, dragon boats and leaves, and in lucky Chinese colors like red, yellow or green, the sewn cloth sachets enclose the heady aromas of traditional Chinese herbal medicine.
“According Chinese folklore, the traditional sachets repel insects and sickness, and are also used to pray for health and peace,” said Chen. “But today, they are mostly just reminders of our cultural heritage.”
Indeed, most people tuck the sachets in clothing or in handbags to let the scents infuse their belongings. Some hang them in homes or cars.
Chen lives in the Longbai neighborhood of Minhang. Her home is steeped in the aromas of ageratum, angelica, cloves and artemisia leaves, among other herbs and spices.
Every year, Chen’s little business makes about 300,000 of the fragrant sachets.
About 80 percent of them are sold in Chinese traditional medicine shops, priced from 10-60 yuan (US$1.63-US$9.80) each.
“The prime season for selling the sachets is around the Dragon Boat Festival in June, but the preparation work goes on throughout the year,” Chen said.
A late start
She retired from work in a textile factory at age 45. After raising a family, she decided about 10 years ago to revive the tradition of making herbal sachet bags.
It all started in 2003, when Chen bought some handmade sachets from an elderly person at the gate of the Jing’an Temple in downtown Shanghai.
“They were small and delicate and caught my interest,” she said. “I tore them open to study the structures, and then I made a few in the shapes of hearts and zongzi to give my family and friends as gifts.”
Encouraged by their response, Chen started to start making sachets as a little business. She rented a stall at the Longhua Temple Fair in 2005 to sell them. The business thrived.
An 80-year-old woman who once stopped at her stall told Chen that authentic traditional sachet bags were filled with yixiang powder — a mixture of aromatic Chinese traditional medicines, including angelica, cloves, artemisia leaves, camphor, dried orange peel, mint and ageratum.
She said the herbs help dispel insects and relieve dampness symptoms in wet weather.
Authentic yixiang sachet
Chen went to see Ye Lanfang, manager of the Tonghanchun Chinese Medicine Shop, who told her that traditional yixiang powder hadn’t been mixed for a long time because it had faded from public popularity. But he agreed to mix up some for her.
Five kilograms of the powder were specially made for Chen, and the medicine shop also asked to be a supplier of her sachet products.
“The feedback was extraordinary,” Ye said. “Hundreds of her sachets were sold out in a couple of hours. We ordered 30,000 more from Chen in the second year.”
The success proved a bit too much for one woman to handle, so now Chen employs about 50 people to help her make the sachets. She monitors the yixiang powder to make sure it remains faithful to the traditional recipe.
Yiwu in Zhejiang Province is the biggest wholesale center for scented sachet bags in China, but most of the products made there are filled with ordinary compound perfumes instead of traditional Chinese medicine, Chen said.
In 2008, she compiled everything she had collected about traditional Chinese sachets into a guidebook that she shares with people in other communities. She also conducts classes for senior citizens and the disabled to show them how to make the sachet bags.
Her skills were exhibited at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.
“Profits are pretty low, but we still donate some of the money we earn to charities,” she said. “I get so much satisfaction in promoting this tradition to keep it alive.”
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