IN a recent TV series, a young Mao Zedong (1893-1976) collects a handful of blessed incense ash from a Buddhist temple in hopes of treating his mother who has collapsed on hearing bad news about the family rice business.

In the program “Mao Zedong,” Mao’s cousin has already bought his mother Western medicine — novel to the average Chinese at the time. He grabs Mao’s incense ash neatly wrapped in a handkerchief and tosses it away.

He calls Mao “silly” for believing a Buddhist master who told him to mix the incense ash with water and have his mother drink it. The Buddhist said it could cure ailments. “I’ve only heard that eating incense ash would kill a person — never that it could cure anyone,” the cousin says scornfully.

The TV series commemorating Mao’s 120th birth anniversary depicts the tumultuous early 20th century, when Western ideas and medicine were introduced. To many Chinese, traditional herbal incense developed thousands of years earlier was inferior to Western healing. Mao’s cousin, along with many other Chinese, has stigmatized valuable Chinese traditions, including incense culture.

In fact, traditional herbal incense, made according to ancient formulas, does have health functions linked to traditional Chinese medicine, though incense is not strictly a cure. It’s more of a health-maintainer and balancer of yin-yang energies.

By the 1950s, Mao had become a staunch supporter of traditional Chinese medicine. He once wrote “Long Live Acupuncture!” His attitude toward herbal incense, though less emphatic, was also sympathetic.

Renowned culture commentator Liu Yang writes in his blog that Mao’s mother once cured his childhood ailments with incense ash from a Buddhist temple in Shaoshan, his hometown, in Hunan Province. Liu says that once he himself was drenched with rain and got a fever on a mountain in Zhejiang Province. A Taoist gave him some incense ash to eat and the next day he felt fine. He had no idea why the incense seemed to work.

Not a placebo

Liu says Chairman Mao might have appreciated incense ash mainly because it helped poor patients, probably through the placebo effect — meaning an ineffective placebo “works” in healing because people believe it will work.

And since the ash came from a Buddhist temple, many people believed Buddha would answer their prayers for healing.

But China’s traditional herbal incense is not just a placebo.

“Traditional herbal incenses all help strengthen the yangming energy channel that opens at the mouth and nose and ends in the spleen and stomach,” says Fu Jingliang, founder of modern incense culture in China.

Yangming is one of the body’s 12 channels that traditional Chinese healers believe facilitate the flow of vital energy.

“By feeding the channel through nostrils and pores, traditional herbal incense helps consolidate positive inner strength while fending off exogenous pathogens,” Fu tells Shanghai Daily.

Fu is chairman of the China Incense Society, chief incense consultant to Shaolin Temple, founder of China’s first website on incense culture, and president of Shandong Huitong Incense Industrial Co.

While herbal incense works mainly through inhalation of smoke absorbed through membranes, traditional Chinese medicine works mainly though acupuncture and drinking herbal decoctions, or both.

“But you can also drink water mixed with herbal incense ash to cure certain ailments,” Fu says.

In the 1990s, hospital staff in Fu’s hometown in Shandong Province thought he had passed away because he hadn’t visited in 30 years. Fu said he had treated himself for occasional fever and diarrhea by inhaling herbal incense or drinking ash mixed with water.

Anti-flu incense

“In fact, one stick of our disease-prevention incense has the same function as a certain dose of TCM,” Fu says. The ash should be mixed with water and drunk, but not the sediment at the bottom. Agarwood, sandalwood and Angelica dahurica are some of the ingredients of this incense.

Fu once tested his herbal anti-flu incense on chicken and pigs, in cooperation with scientists in Shandong Province. In several controlled tests, the incense kept the animals disease-free, Fu says, adding that incense is superior to anti-viral drugs.

The health benefits of herbal incense were documented in 1625 by physician Miao Xiyong (1546-1627) in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

He stated, “All exogenous pathogens enter the body through the mouth and/or nose, the two gates of the yangming channel. If the channel is weak, pathogens will easily enter the body. With the help of clean and yang fragrance (from natural herbs), pathogens will be driven away and the spleen and stomach will be at ease.”

An expert on Chinese and Western cultures of fragrance, Fu says one big East-West difference is that traditional Chinese incense is more health-oriented, while Western fragrance is more pleasure-oriented.

Today, most modern perfumes — Western and Chinese — are made of chemical compounds of fragrance that mainly please the olfactory senses but can harm health. Some modern perfumes do use real flowers like lavender, but in many cases they are made of single ingredients.

“Traditional Chinese incense is made of multiple ingredients that combine to balance the organs and yin and yang,” Fu says. “Multiple ingredients are much more effective than single ingredients because they work synergistically.”

Though burning precious agarwood alone as incense is popular nowadays — and a demonstration of wealth and status — inhaling only agarwood for a prolonged period is unhealthy, Fu explains, saying it contains a lot of yang energy and needs to be balanced. Too much can cause disorientation and anxiety by upsetting the body-mind balance.

Partly because of its health benefits, herbal incense was already popular before 221 BC, around when Emperor Qin unified China. Incense culture advanced during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), when Chinese territory and trade greatly expanded to have access to more fragrant herbs.

Incense culture was consolidated in the Sui (AD 581-618) and Tang (AD 618-907) dynasties. In the imperial palace, incense was burned while Tang emperors discussed state affairs.

Height of incense culture

Incense culture reached its height in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), when nobility enjoyed incense as a cultural pastime, to the extent of building rooms specifically for the use of elaborate incense ceremonies and appreciation. They involved meticulous preparation with various tools, burning, inhaling and contemplating graceful curls of smoke. Incense was often lit while playing guqin (seven-string zither) and practicing calligraphy.

In the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, incense culture became even more popular.

Traditional incense culture was promoted by scholars and scholar-officials, especially in the Tang and Song dynasties. They believed herbal incense captured and encapsulated the pure yang energy of the universe and thus would assist them in becoming one with Heaven and Earth.

Incense for literati

“Being one with Heaven and Earth” — tian ren he yi (ÌìÈ˺ÏÒ») — has been the ultimate philosophical pursuit of Chinese literati ever since Taoist Chuang Tzu (369-286 BC) put forward the concept.

“It’s human nature to love fragrance, just as trees love the sun and butterflies love flowers,” Fu says. “In traditional Chinese culture, incense represents the ultimate harmony between man, heaven and earth.”

Incense also epitomizes the beauty of being soft, a concept cherished by Confucianists, Buddhists and Taoists. “When incense is lit, its smoke flows in a slow and elegant form similar to tai chi movements, the rhyme of calligraphy and the rhythm of guqin music,” Fu observes.

Qu Yuan (340-278 BC) was one of the first scholar-officials to link herbal incense with morality and rectitude. He wrote in a lengthy poem titled “Li Sao” (“The Lament”) that he wore certain fragrant herbs to help elevate his moral character to follow the way of Heaven.

Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), a poet, calligrapher, painter and official of the Song Dynasty, said herbal incense has 10 merits. The first: “It creates rapport with the purest elements between Heaven and Earth” and the second: “It has the ability to purify body and soul.”

Because of these merits, many Song scholars not only appreciated incense but made it themselves. Su Dongpo (1037-1101), the greatest Song poet, took incense-making to an extreme, even a metaphysical level. It is said he once waited seven years just for a drop of snow water right in the center of a petal of a plum flower. He used that water to make incense he named “Spring’s Message from the Snow.”

“From Su’s story we can see that the character of a maker is very important in traditional incense culture,” says Wang Zhiguo, an entrepreneur and philanthropist in Beijing who loves tea, guqin and incense.

“The maker of herbal incense is an important ingredient, too,” says Fu. “Technically, it’s not really that difficult to make herbal incense, although you must collect and combine natural herbs according to strict rules of time and place. The most difficult part is whether you have or aspire to have a noble character (that conforms to the purest elements between Heaven and Earth).”

The scholastic tradition of inhaling and making herbal incense to elevate character has been lost since the late Qing Dynasty when China was in turmoil. Burning traditional herbal incense is rare even today, largely giving way to chemical fragrance compounds.

According to a report last year by the Science and Technology Daily, chemically compounded incenses release a substance that’s harmful to the lungs.

“But I believe that the spring of traditional herbal incense isn’t far away,” says Tang Muzhi, a painter and lover of tea culture in Shanghai who burns Fu’s herbal incense almost every day.