Lao Xu said incense. Chinese incense culture and "intangible cultural heritage".
Chinese incense culture has gone through a history of 5,000 years along with the historical development of the Chinese nation. She sprouted in the ancient sacrificial rites, starting from the virtue of incense in the Spring and Autumn Period, forming the nobility of incense in the Qin and Han dynasties, popularizing the incense burning in the Wei and Jin dynasties, maturing in the fragrance of the Tang Dynasty, perfecting the elegance of incense in the two Song Dynasty, widely in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and decaying in the troubled times of abandoning incense.
Nowadays, traditional culture has been revived, especially in recent years, ** has made this direction clear. As one of the traditional cultural expressions, incense culture has shown a vigorous development momentum.
There have been countless methods of making incense in history, and there are many forms of incense, but there are only three that have been effectively passed down and recognized by relevant institutions, namely "hand-squeezed incense", "hand-rubbed incense" and "incense drenching".
"hand-squeezed incense" appeared relatively early, not later than the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The Southern Dynasty poet He Ji wrote in "Ban Jieyu's Resentment": "Sleeping alone sells incense, and cries Fei brocade scarf. "Xiangqi" refers to a stick or a bunch of incense that can stand upright, indicating that even if He Ji could not conclude that Ban Jieyu used such incense during the period of Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty, it was also used by the poet himself. Well, this incense is at least 1,600 years old. At that time, people mixed incense powder and sticky powder, added water and homogenized into incense mud, and squeezed out by hand through a mouth made of different materials, and after drying, it became "incense".
More than 300 years later, the important minister of the Tubo Dynasty, Tunmi Sambuza, invented Tibetan incense, and the production process is exactly the same as "incense", whether it was influenced by the princess Wencheng who married to Tibet, or really learned from India, or both, we cannot verify. Later, this method of making incense gradually disappeared in the mainland, but it was carried forward in the first place, becoming the only means of Tibetan incense production, and was included in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
The birthplace of "hand-rubbed incense" is Xiaogang in Xinhui, Guangdong, also known as Xiaogang incense, which originated in the Ming Dynasty. Originally, Dai, a woman from Ogang Tiantai Village, used local materials and kneaded them with bamboo strips using wood chips, citrus peels, and spices such as local plants called "bay leaf trees". After that, the villagers followed suit, and spread throughout Ooka, forming a family-style incense-making workshop unique to Ooka and the "hand-rubbing incense" production technique with Ooka's characteristics, which have been passed down from generation to generation. In 2013, the production technique was included in the fifth batch of provincial intangible cultural heritage list of Guangdong Province.
The other is "pouring incense", which originated in Yongchun, Quanzhou, and is also called Yongchun incense. During the Tang and Song dynasties, the largest business of the Pu family, which had political and business strength in Quanzhou Port, was to import various precious spices. At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the Pu family was weakened, in order to take refuge, they moved to Yongchun, Dehua, Jinjiang and other places, and the descendants of the Pu family who moved to Dapu Town, Yongchun, passed down the incense-making skills from generation to generation from generation to generation, and it has a history of more than 300 years. In 2017, it was included in the fifth batch of provincial intangible cultural heritage list.
With the development of modern industry, mechanical incense making has long occupied a dominant position, coupled with the application of chemical flavors and dyes, handmade incense gradually declined, although the three incense-making processes that have been handed down are named "intangible cultural heritage", but with the impact of "modernization", almost extinct. The key is that the cultural fault line and the lack of theory will make the "craft" lose its vitality and urgently need people of insight to participate in the inheritance.