Chuantong Incense Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Fujian incense is a product of the material exchange and lifestyle brought by the Maritime Silk Road. The people of southern Fujian crossed the sea to make a living, taking the incense-making craft aboard their ships and bringing back incense materials from Nanyang and overseas lands; the Quanzhou and Xiamen area has a warm, humid climate and fertile woodlands where aromatic herbs readily grow, so incense materials need not be sought far and the supply is endless. The incense trade gathered into a profession here; in Daupu, Yongchun, the Pu family has transmitted it from the Shunzhi reign of the Qing to the tenth generation, and the Xiamen area has also gone through six generations. Most incense makers were illiterate but knew incense, distinguishing good from bad by nose and palate and by the incense formulas handed down by experts; this experience-centered knowledge system spread with boatmen, pilgrims, and trading houses to the southeastern coast.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Fujian incense-making craft is one of the representatives of China's traditional incense-making craft, with Daupu Town of Yongchun County, Quanzhou City, and Haicang District of Xiamen City, Fujian Province, as its core dissemination areas. The Quanzhou and Xiamen areas lie in the subtropics, with a warm, humid climate and fertile woodland soils suited to the growth of various herbal medicines, providing high-quality raw materials and a suitable natural environment for incense making; together with the convenient sea, land, and air transport locally, this has laid a good foundation for the cultivation of incense materials and the development of the making craft. Fujian incense uses hundreds of aromatic natural herbal medicines from southern Fujian and from home and abroad as its main raw materials, made according to ancient methods. Its making craft includes the following processes: harvesting various natural herbal spices in season; designing incense formulas varying by person and time, selecting and blending the incense materials on the principle of 'monarch, minister, assistant, and envoy'; orderly processing, pounding, grinding, and stirring the blended spices; using pure water or, when necessary, refined honey to evenly mix the spices, then combining and extruding them into various incense products of different types; and after the incense products are shade-dried or baked, storing them in urns for cellar aging. After cellar aging for a period, the incense products have better medicinal efficacy and a fuller, more pleasant aroma. The Fujian incense-making craft is a product of the cultural fusion of the Maritime Silk Road. The total number of incense enterprises in the two places exceeds 600, and the owners, technicians, employees, and incense-shop operators number over 100,000. The Fujian traditional incense-making craft is a cultural crystallization after the collision of Eastern resources and Western techniques; it bears witness to over a thousand years of maritime Chinese-foreign cultural exchange, reflects the broad public's unremitting pursuit of physical and mental health and a fine quality of life, and holds important historical and cultural value.
Documented Process Records
Besides devoting themselves to the research, development, and production of purely natural health-preserving incense products and actively exploring and refining the incense-making process, the protecting unit and inheritors of the Fujian incense-making craft project also hold science-popularization publicity and incense-making skill training to let more people know and use incense, promoting the craft's transmission and dissemination.
Gathering in season and formulas made to the occasion
Aromatics are picked in season, since the gathering date changes their strength; a formula is then designed to occasion and person, the materials weighed as sovereign, minister, assistant and envoy, processed, crushed, ground and mixed.
Binding with clean water and ageing in jars
The blended aromatics are bound with clean water, and with refined honey when needed, kneaded and pressed into the required forms, then dried and sealed in jars, where ageing deepens the scent and steadies the medicinal action.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The core dissemination area of Fujian incense is in southern Fujian: Daupu Town of Yongchun County, Quanzhou, is a major town for the distribution and processing of incense products, while Haicang District of Xiamen excels in incense enterprises and export; the two places together have over 600 incense enterprises and more than 100,000 practitioners, who, together with incense-shop operators, support the scale of the southern Fujian incense industry. Local incense products are sold in Hong Kong, Macao, and the Nanyang region, and the commercial networks of the qiaoxiang (overseas Chinese hometowns) provide channels for the exchange of incense materials and techniques. The craft is mainly taught within enterprises in the master-apprentice mode; the enterprises also undertake science popularization and incense-making training, spreading the climate of knowing and using incense among the people.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Chuantong Incense Making Craftsmanship · Chuantong Incense Making Craftsmanship · Chuantong Incense Making Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
This craft mainly relies on master-apprentice transmission within enterprises. The Quanzhou Yongchun incense industry has been transmitted from Pu Shimao in the third year of the Shunzhi reign of the Qing to the present, reaching the tenth generation; the Xiamen incense industry has also gone through six generations of transmission. Besides devoting themselves to the research, development, and production of purely natural health-preserving incense products and actively exploring and refining the incense-making process, the protecting unit and inheritors of the Fujian incense-making craft project also hold science-popularization publicity and incense-making skill training to let more people know and use incense, promoting the craft's transmission and dissemination. The transmission and dissemination of this craft also plays a positive role in enhancing the influence of Chinese culture.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Li Shiliang 05-2901
- Huang Ou 05-2902
- Lin Wenxi
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。