Interesting things about using incense in Song Dynasty

Huang Tingjian, a representative scholar-bureaucrat in the Song Dynasty, has a picture of Making Baby Fragrant, which is now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This note is now regarded as a masterpiece of calligraphy art, but it was originally a recipe for making incense recorded by Huang Tingjian for his friends from memory. It can be seen that at that time, literati like him had some classic recipes for making incense in their minds, which is probably the best evidence, indicating that the upper class in the Song Dynasty was keen on tasting incense to the point of courageously competing for it.

The culture of the Song Dynasty is characterized by its simplicity and extreme elegance and exquisiteness. Unfortunately, there are only poems, porcelain, paintings and so on. It has been passed down to this day, but the highly developed incense at that time, like music and dance at that time, can only be recorded through literature. Even so, even if we can only glimpse the fragments in the pen and ink of the literati at that time, the prosperity and beauty of the Song Dynasty in Incense are still enough to surprise and envy future generations. It's really time for someone to tell you a high-end story about Song's good character and fragrance.

In the upper class of that era, burning Ruo incense in the incense burner was a routine setting that could not be interrupted for 24 hours. The strong fragrance is similar to the ambient music in some public places or cafes today, and it is a basic background of life. Without it, life cannot flow normally. Since the content of life itself is varied, correspondingly, there should be enough fragrant products to match it. As a result, in the Song Dynasty, different materials and different crafts of incense products had different patterns, which were suitable for smoking clothes, entertaining guests, outdoors, sleeping at night, or even sobering up. Probably only the sensitive noses of Song people can accurately accept the passwords that are transmitted from subtle differences and can affect the soul.