Since the late Qing Dynasty, continuous wars and long-term political turmoil, as well as the introduction of western social thoughts, have made the traditional social system in China suffer an unprecedented impact. China Xiang culture has also entered a difficult period of development.
Tasting and using incense is a luxury to a great extent, so the development of incense culture especially needs a stable and prosperous "prosperous" environment, and the continuous turmoil in modern society not only greatly affects the development of spice trade and incense-making industry; It also makes people lose the fragrance and pleasant leisure.
On the other hand, modern China lagged behind the western world in science, technology and military affairs, which also aroused people's doubts about traditional culture and began to widely accept modern western cultural ideas. However, when the nation is in danger, the reflection on traditional culture is inevitably too extreme, resulting in overcorrection and sports criticism, which makes many essence of traditional culture confused with dross and denied. Even concepts such as purity of mind and self-cultivation have been criticized as negative attitudes. In this extreme reflection, it will inevitably involve the fragrant culture with distinctive traditional characteristics.
At the same time, with the evolution of the life style and values of the literati class, the strength of the literati class, which has long supported and promoted the development of Hunan culture in China since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, has become weaker and weaker. In this situation, the fragrant culture, which has long been integrated into the piano room of the study and daily life, has gradually drifted away, losing its connotation of calming the nerves, beautifying life and cultivating the soul, and is mainly kept as a sacrificial ceremony in temple sacrifices.
In ancient times, natural spices were used to make incense, but in modern times, chemical spices have become the main raw materials for making incense.
Due to the development of chemical industry, synthetic spices (namely chemical flavors) appeared in Europe in the second half of the19th century. These chemical flavors can not only roughly simulate the taste of most spices, but also have easy access to raw materials (such as oil and coal tar), which are extremely low in cost and easy to produce very rich fragrance. Therefore, it quickly replaced natural perfume and became the main perfuming agent in modern industrial production and perfume industry.
Compared with natural perfume, perfume made of chemical essence is cheap, which is made naturally by manufacturers, sold by merchants and bought by pilgrims. So most of the perfumes we see in the market now are these chemical spices. They are called sandalwood and agarwood, but in fact they just use the chemical essence of "sandalwood flavor" or "heavy fragrance".
Compared with natural spices, chemical flavors have similar or even stronger fragrance, but they are not the same in terms of fragrance quality, calming the nerves and keeping healthy, enlightening the spirit and so on. Many natural spices are listed as top-grade medicinal materials, and as synthetic spices of chemical products, they look very fragrant at first glance, but if used too much, they will be harmful to health. Moreover, even in terms of smell alone, chemical flavors are only close to and far from natural flavors.
Chemical flavors and fragrances are popular because most pilgrims just burn incense as a ritual. Since we don't smell or taste incense, we just burn incense to see, naturally we ignore the material, formula and quality of incense, and only pay attention to the beauty or rich fragrance of incense.
The extensive use of chemical essence and chemical processing technology has also substantially changed the modern and contemporary aroma-making technology. Although some traditional methods and techniques are still adopted, they are only peripheral and formal, while the core contents such as the selection, processing, compatibility and temperature of spices are discarded. One of the consequences is the interruption of fragrance-making technology and the loss of fragrance spectrum formula, so that few people are really proficient in traditional fragrance-making technology now.
Although chemical essence is the main force now, you can still see the fragrance made of natural spices, which also leaves room for people who like to taste the fragrance.
At present, there are mainly two kinds of natural spices: one is the "single fragrance" of a single spice (or basically keep the original state of the spice, such as block, strip or powder; Or made into thread incense, coil incense and other shapes). Although its quality is better than chemical fragrance, its taste and health-preserving function cannot be fully exerted by directly using a single fragrance, and many spices such as sandalwood are not suitable for use alone. The ancients had a clear saying that "sandalwood is burned alone, and naked burning is easy to float in the air, which makes the gods restless for a long time." This kind of single incense is only the original method of using incense before the Han Dynasty. After the Han and Tang dynasties, the main use was "lotus fragrance" (blended with various spices).
The second category is a combination of spices, mostly linear incense, coil incense and so on. However, the manufacture of traditional synthetic incense not only needs natural spices as raw materials, but also needs reasonable formula and strict processing methods and techniques. But as far as I know, most of the few natural spices that can be seen in the market are only made of natural spices, and there are very few authentic spices that are really made according to the ancient method.
Nowadays, people's neglect of the quality of incense and the adoption of chemical essence and chemical processing technology have greatly lowered the technical threshold for making incense, so that there are many perfumers now, and the quality of incense products is uneven. The fragrant products on the shelves have more and more fancy names, richer shapes and more gorgeous packaging, but there are few "fragrant treasures" in the "golden jade". Inferior ones only smell of burning grass after being lit, or they are vulgar although they are rich in fragrance. These so-called incense can be said to have the shape of incense, which ruined the reputation of incense. Faced with these fakes, it is no wonder that people nowadays are reluctant to enjoy the fragrance. I wonder if Dongpo can still write poems here? How would it feel if the immortal Buddha and ancestors could really smell the smoke?
Although the current incense and incense culture are not as good as those in ancient times, with the improvement of people's material and spiritual living standards, more and more people like to taste and use incense in recent years, which has higher requirements for the quality of incense; At the same time, more people who love and understand incense began to devote themselves to inheriting and carrying forward the traditional incense culture. With the further prosperity of social economy and culture, China's fragrant culture will also be full of vitality, showing wonderful and charming Millennium charm in this great era.
Let's talk off topic. I want to buy agarwood. Do you have any suggestions? Is it sweet? Where to? Respect this brand, not child care, and friends around me feel good.