Yongchun Incense: From Sea Routes to Dapu · 從泉州海路到永春達埔

October 22, 2026

Two names often frame the story of Yongchun incense: the Maritime Silk Roads and Dapu, a town in inland Fujian known for incense-making. Between the sea and the hills lies a history of materials, migration and practical knowledge, repeatedly adapted to the needs of everyday life.

The sea brought aromatic materials

Quanzhou was a major maritime trading centre during the Song and Yuan periods. UNESCO describes a commercial system connecting its port with inland production areas through river and land routes between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. Aromatic materials travelled within that larger network, reaching markets and users beyond the waterfront.^[1]

There is physical evidence of this traffic. Excavated in 1974, the Houzhu shipwreck in Quanzhou Bay contained aromatic materials, medicines, ceramics and wooden cargo labels, among other finds. Such remains make the trade tangible. They establish the movement of materials; they do not, on their own, establish an uninterrupted Song-dynasty lineage for a workshop operating today.^[2]

A craft takes root in Dapu

Yongchun County's account places the beginnings of its local incense-making tradition in the late Ming and early Qing period. Descendants of the Pu family, who had lived in Quanzhou, moved to Yongchun and brought incense formulas and techniques with them. This local account belongs to a later chapter than Song–Yuan maritime trade. The two histories can be read together without collapsing the centuries between them.^[3]

In the hills, knowledge met local materials. Dapu's characteristic bamboo-core incense uses fine bamboo splints coated with aromatic powder. The size of the core, the fineness of the powder and the sequence of wetting and coating all matter to the finished stick. A knowledge of aromatics became a repeatable local craft, learned through work and passed between people.

What goes into a stick

A 2017 Xinhua field report records a sequence that includes preparing cores, sieving powder, wetting, rotating bundles through powder, cutting, spreading and drying. During the rotating stage, makers turn a bundle by its exposed ends to distribute the coating. For drying, bundles can be spread into flower-like forms: the celebrated “incense flowers” are also a practical way of organising space.^[4]

These movements reveal how much incense-making depends on judgement. A formula is one part of the work; preparing powder, managing moisture, shaping and drying bring it into a usable form. A written recipe can preserve quantities and names. Fluency in the movements develops at the workbench.

From family workshops to a production centre

The industry did not remain fixed in the form of a family incense room. A 2023 Fujian provincial government report describes techniques being taught beyond the Pu family after the founding of the People's Republic, followed by the establishment of the Hankou incense factory in 1981. Organised production and exports changed the scale of the trade, as later clustering brought new suppliers, equipment and routes to market.^[5]

In 2021, Fujian incense-making techniques, represented by Yongchun incense, entered China's national list of representative intangible cultural heritage projects. What is transmitted is a living body of knowledge. Traditional bamboo-core incense exists alongside other formats and changing methods. A regional heritage designation should not be read as a claim that every product from the region is personally made by a designated heritage bearer.^[6]

The incense we use today

XIANSU incense cakes and sticks are made in Dapu, Yongchun. That origin connects them to a place shaped by maritime memory and by production that continues to evolve. We want to make the background legible, then let each fragrance be understood through its character, format and use.

Bamboo-core incense is one format; the cakes and sticks in our current collection are others. Knowing the place includes recognising those differences. Tradition offers stories to inherit, and also the habit of looking closely at what is actually in our hands.

Explore XIANSU incense · Read on: materials, recipes and daily life in Chinese incense-making