When it comes to aromas and natural aromatic therapies, we all get too excited and our mood lightens up in a second. Just like that there’s a Asian tradition of burning incense sticks to meditate, celebrate festivals, and much more. But the incense sticks of Vietnam village are something exceptional and worth a glimpse.
The Best Time To Visit Vietnam’s Incense Village
The best time to visit this place is during the Lunar New year, a Chinese New Year, celebrated around January to February every year. During this time, the Vietnamese incense village people get busier and begin the preparation of incense sticks to be used for the celebration of Lunar New Year. So, book a flight to Vietnam and get a chance to observe the beautiful preparations and festivities done to welcome the New Year.
Vietnamese Incense Village
The “incense village” of Vietnam is officially known as Quang Phu Cau village and is located in Ung Hoa district of the country. This is the place where the process of dying, chopping bamboo, drying incense and final making of Vietnamese joss sticks takes place.
In addition, the local editors say that the families of this village have been dying and making incense sticks for over a century now. Usually January is the busiest time when workers tend to get stuck up in the preparation of fragrant incense sticks for Lunar Year celebration.
Moreover, incense making is a major household work in this village, considering they earn a good amount from selling these out. In other words, the prepared aromatic incense sticks are not only sold locally for festivals, but also exported internationally to attain good income.
What Do Vietnamese Incense Sticks Smell Like?
An incense stick of Vietnam village is an aromatic stick, prepared all over the village by experienced people during Lunar Year. These incense sticks fragrance is perfectly refined to be a spicy scent, which when burned gives an ethereal and stimulating feeling.
Why Do Vietnamese People Burn Incense Sticks?
Vietnamese have been burning incense sticks for many centuries now. Locals said that they do so to mark their necessary festivals and celebrations, and as a way to worship and recall their ancestors.
Like many other countries, Vietnam also believes that incense burning is an ancient ritual and takes it pretty seriously. And that’s how, the preparation of incense in Vietnam began and is successfully undertaken till date.
Soaked in symbolism and culturism, the burning of Vietnamese joss sticks is taken as an act of worshiping and believing that their prayers are rising to heaven through smoke emerging from these sticks. In other words, they believe that the incense sticks become a direct connection between God and the people chanting spiritual words.
Preparation Of Vietnamese Incense Sticks
A specific traditional procedure is followed while making the incense sticks of Vietnam village. The process begins in January just before the Chinese New Year.
To begin with, the bamboo tree is chopped off to collect the finest bamboo barks. The technique called ‘splitting the foot of the incense stick’ is undertaken where the barks are trimmed to lengths, soaked, and splitted into halves and again until the desired thin sticks of 3 mm square are achieved.
Then these sticks are wet and dried under direct sunlight, so that when they’re burned, they can light up easily. Now the roots of these sticks are dyed pink and then put outdoors in the sun to dry again. These pink dyed sticks cover the whole village and look like a pink sea if viewed from a high point.
After drying up, these aromatic incense sticks are coated in a fragrant incense paste, made out of a sticky bark powder from the o duoc tree and a fragrant powder of agarwood, blackbutt and cinnamon wood. This paste is firmly rolled around the pink dyed sticks by hand or machine and kept to dry in the sun for one last time.
After drying up, the sticks are ready to burn up and enjoy the aromatic smoke emerging out of them.
Lunar New Year In Vietnam Incense Village
The Lunar New Year is a special occasion for Buddhists like Vietnamese. Surprisingly, for this celebration, villagers prepare 50,000 incense sticks per day. Usually in January the entire incense village turns into a dazzling sea of pink which looks immensely beautiful and fascinating for the tourists.
This is also the time when the incense sticks of Vietnam village are up for sale and export to other countries which is a massive source of income for many households and a talk of pride and appreciation.
Sales tick up every year during this time, when huge crowds of people enter temples to light incense to symbolize their worship, or burn these aromatic sticks before the ancestral altar at their homes.
