Making incense in Choa village

Making incense in Choa traditional craft village.

Neohouzeaua, colored sticks spread as thousand petal flowers; incense drying frames are everywhere. Yellow is the color of neohouzeaua stick, red is the color of incense stick, black is the color of lute and char coal powder, all of which creates a colorful pictures with refined fragrance of incense.

Incense making requires certain techniques and skills. It requires strength to mix powder properly; it requires carefulness and meticulousness of the elderly people to split fillet and whittle stick. Children often roll the incense sticks. To enable incenses to emit special fragrance when being burned, to be fully burned and to have spiral shape after being burned, materials must be thoroughly chosen. Since the beginning of the year the village people go to many places in mountainous areas in the North such as Tuyen Quang and Bac Kan province to order neohouzeaua, char coal and lute. It takes half year to prepare materials yet it takes only two months to make and sell finished products.

In Choa village, every person, every family makes incense when the September in Lunar year begins. They start making incense this time because it is also the time when the white globes begins to bleed. Lute mixed with char coal powder is rolled around bamboo or neohouzeaua sticks create incense sticks with warm fragrance.

The most important step is material mixing. If it is done improperly, incense are badly burned and have burnt smell. Neohouzeaua is split into small round stick 50 cm to 1 m long then dried. Char coal is minced and mixed with cooked lute with the proportion: 60 % of lute and 40 % of char coal powder. The mixture which is properly done has appropriate plasticity and fragrance and shiny black. Then the mixture is rolled around sticks to shape incense sticks.

People of Choa village believe that incense making is related to spiritual matter so their conscience does not allow themselves to do the job carelessly or make bad quality incense. Incense makers usually check their products’ quality, i.e. whether the incense burns properly, how its fragrance and its shape after being burned are.

Incense making is not only a cultural beauty but also brings about significant incomes to the local people. Currently, there are around 300 out of 650 households in the village are doing the traditional vocation. The annual black incense output it tens of tons with turnover from VND 1 to 1.5 billion. However, incense making is only a family level vocation and considered a part time job. There is nobody to gather incense making household to shape a cooperative or private enterprise or propose a suitable development direction.