What if the future of fragrance in China is actually hidden in its past? On September 9, Beijing officially recognized 11 new occupations and 23 new specialties, yea–China has such a list that it regularly updates, among them… the incense-making artisan.
This is perhaps a telling signal that the country’s breakneck sprint forward is now being accompanied by a revival that reaches back over a thousand years to reclaim the art of scenting space, not the body.
In bedrooms, tea rooms and creative studios across China, traditional incense is once again rising. Egyptian perfume devotee Yasmine Ramadan, who also happens to have a Ph.D. in Chinese Literature, explores the wisps and wisdom.
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If you walk into a modern Chinese city today, you will find a world moving at an extraordinary speed. Screens glowing on every street and each corner, high- speed trains crossing the country, cafés filled with laptops and conversations, and millions of people moving through their days surrounded by noise, information and constant stimulation.
And yet, among all this movement, something remarkably old is making a quiet comeback: Young Chinese are discovering (or shall we say “rediscovering”) incense.
Not as simple as something burned in temples neither as a spiritual ritual, nor as an artifact of an ancient civilization kept behind museum glasses, but more as part of their everyday life.
Image: online
Traditional, Censational
Traditional Chinese incense is finding its way into bedrooms, study spaces, tea rooms and creative studios. People are learning how to make incense by hand, experimenting with traditional aromatic woods, herbs and different old blends, and turning to fragrance as a way to relax, concentrate, sleep, or even to create a different atmosphere around themselves. There is something almost paradoxical about this revival.
In one of the world’s fastest-changing societies, people are returning to one of the slowest fragrance experiences imaginable: Watching a thin thread of smoke rise, change shape, linger for a moment and then disappear, leaving the air filled with aroma. Perhaps this is exactly what modern life has been missing.
After all, when your phone gives you notifications every 30 seconds, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is light a piece of incense and stare at it for 10 minutes without checking WeChat—the superapp that serves as the main communication platform in China. Ancient Chinese might have called this “cultivating the mind.” Today, we might simply call it “putting your phone down” (at least to get some off-screen dopamine).
But beneath the humor lies an old idea: The modern Chinese rediscovery of fragrance echoes a belief deeply rooted in Chinese culture. Namely, that the space around us can influence the person within it. A room is not simply a container for human activity. Its light, sounds, objects, air, and even its scent, can change how we feel, think and perceive the world. More than 1,000 years ago, Chinese scholars had already discovered this. They did not necessarily wear fragrance to announce their presence. They rather burned it to transform the space around them into a space that reflects how they think and feel.
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Filled With Fire & Flair
As someone who grew up in Egypt, where fragrance often evokes temples, rituals, precious oils and the enduring presence of history, I found it difficult at first to understand why so many Chinese texts spoke not about wearing fragrance, but about filling a room with it.
The answer became clearer when I imagined stepping into a scholar’s studio during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). I pictured what things would’ve been like outside, merchants shouting across the busy marketplace, horses moving through the narrow streets and the rhythms of daily life continuing without pause. Inside, however, another world existed.
Visualize this: A small bronze incense burner rests on a wooden desk. A thin ribbon of smoke rises towards the ceiling. Beside it lie calligraphy brushes, a few unfinished poems and a half- open book. The room is so quiet that you can hear the sound of pages turning.
Image: online
Egyptians, Eternity and Esscentials
As a perfume aficionada from Egypt, I have always been fascinated by the stories hidden inside a scent. I come from a civilization where fragrance is deeply intertwined with history, rituals, spiritual moments and the idea of eternity. Ancient Egyptians filled temples with aromatic smoke, used precious oils in religious ceremonies and surrounded the dead with scents meant to accompany them beyond this life, to their forever one.
Perhaps what captivates me most, approaching China through the world of fragrance, is how deeply the Chinese past continues to live inside its modern scents. There is a broader cultural movement in China today to bring traditional Chinese elements into contemporary life, and fragrance has become one of its most intriguing expressions. Ingredients and aromatic materials long associated with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and everyday Chinese life, to name a few, we have: Agarwood, sandalwood, jasmine, osmanthus, chrysanthemum, mugwort, tea (with all its different types) and other herbs, all these ingredients are being reimagined in modern Chinese perfumes, incense and also in wellness products (those that focus on having a light, “charming” scent).
They are no longer confined to the pages of ancient medical texts or the shelves of traditional herbal shops, they are being woven into the sensory vocabulary of contemporary China. In a way, Chinese perfumery is doing what China itself has done so well, which is taking something ancient, allowing it to evolve, and giving it a new life without severing its roots. The fragrance may be modern, but somewhere beneath it lingers the memory of a scholar’s studio, a tea room, a medicinal chest or a garden after a bout of rain.
The fragrance is not there to impress anyone, but is there to make the room breathe.
Image: online
Sniffing Out Another Civilization
Thousands of miles away from Egypt’s temples, tombs and chambers, another fragrance civilization was taking shape. But it smelled very different. If ancient Egyptian fragrance was deeply connected with the preservation of the body and the journey toward eternity, ancient Chinese fragrance developed around a different question:
What if scent could help us inhabit the present more fully?
Unlike many ancient civilizations that applied scented oils directly to the body, Chinese fragrance culture developed around the art of perfuming space. This was perhaps the first major difference I encountered while exploring Chinese fragrance culture. Coming from a perfume-loving background, I was accustomed to thinking about fragrance as something carried by a person. Chinese fragrance let me think differently: Perhaps scent could belong to a space before it belonged to an individual. It was something you enter into, and live into, not something you wear. This difference reflected a deeper philosophical outlook about the ancient Chinese.
In ancient China, a person’s inner state was believed to be inseparable from the surrounding environment. The arrangement of objects around them, the movement of air, as well as the quality of light, maybe sometimes even the sound of flowing water, and even the scent of a room, could influence emotional balance and/ or mental clarity. For this reason, incense became woven into everyday intellectual life.
Scholars burned agarwood before writing poetry. Painters lit sandalwood while preparing landscapes drawings. Calligraphers also regarded fragrance as essential to concentration, believing that a calm atmosphere produced a steadier hand and a clearer mind, and a more balanced self. Over time, appreciating incense evolved into an art form in its own right.
In Song times, elite circles held elegant incense gatherings known as xianghui (literally “fragrant meetings”). Participants would compare rare woods and identify fragrances blindfolded, they would discuss the origins of different aromatic materials and compose poetry inspired by scent. Much like tea ceremonies or musical performances, fragrance became a medium through which refinement and cultural literacy could be expressed.
Yet incense was never just about aesthetics. It was also medical. TCM considered fragrance capable of influencing the body’s internal energies. At first, this connection between fragrance and well-being reminded me of how certain aromatic materials are valued across the Middle East. Yet in China, I discovered a far more systematic relationship between scent, health and everyday life, that was influenced by TCM. Aromatic substances were used to dispel dampness, clear the mind, calm emotions, improve sleep and regulate the movement of qi (basically your body’s vital energy). The famous physician Sun Simiao (581-682) even described certain fragrances as tools for nurturing life itself.
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The Art of Elegance
Fragrance also became inseparable from the broader Chinese pursuit of elegance in daily life. The same civilization that cultivated tea, arranged gardens, composed poetry and perfected calligraphy also developed an equally sophisticated language of scent. These pursuits were not viewed as separate arts. They were interconnected pathways towards the same goal: The cultivation of harmony between “you” and the “world around you.”
A scholar might spend an afternoon brewing tea, listening to the rain, admiring a painting and burning a carefully selected incense blend. Each activity engaged a different sense, yet together they created a single unique experience. Fragrance was not merely something to be noticed. It was part of an atmosphere designed specifically to slow the mind, sharpen perception, encourage reflection, clear the mind and balance the soul.
But in Buddhist monasteries, incense acquired yet another role. Monks measured meditation sessions through the gradual burning of incense sticks. Time was counted by fragrance at some point. A period of contemplation might last “one stick of incense,” allowing scent to become a bridge between physical experience and spiritual discipline. This relationship between fragrance and time remains one of the most distinctive features of Chinese civilization.
As I continued reading about Chinese fragrance traditions, I found myself returning to my own cultural background. Both Egypt and China built remarkable fragrance cultures, yet they seemed to be asking different questions through scent. For the ancient Egyptians for example, scent often pointed beyond time and towards the eternity they always believed in. For the Chinese, scent helped people inhabit time more fully, the goal was not to defeat impermanence but to become comfortable within it.
I still remember the first time I encountered traditional Chinese incense–in China. The fragrance was subtle, almost hesitant, unlike the richer and more immediate scents I grew up associating with perfumes and aromatic oils. At first I wondered whether I was missing something. Yet as the scent slowly unfolded in the room, I began to understand that the experience was not meant to announce itself. It was inviting attention in a very subtle way. That small moment helped me appreciate why fragrance occupies such a unique place in Chinese culture
A fragrance appeared, lingered and disappeared. Its beauty existed precisely because it could not be held.
In this sense, incense embodied one of the deepest ideas in Chinese philosophy: Harmony comes not from resisting change, but from moving with it.
The fragrance drifting through a scholar’s room was therefore more than a pleasant aroma. It was a lesson. A lesson in patience, attention and in how to remain calm, even if the world around you is moving.
Image: online
Bouquets And Beyond
The fragrance traditions China and other ancient civilizations of the world reveal very different ways of understanding human existence. Yet all recognized that scent possesses a unique power to shape human experience. It can preserve the sacred, evoke memory or inspire reflection, sometimes it could even connect the visible world to the invisible one. Long before modern perfumes filled department stores and luxury boutiques, old civilizations of the world had already discovered that fragrance was far more than a pleasant smell. It was a way of understanding life itself.
There is perhaps another reason why Chinese fragrance feels so distinctive today: It does not simply revive traditional ingredients; it often attempts to translate an entire Chinese sensory world into fragrance. Tea, for example, is not merely an aromatic note, but part of a long cultural practice associated with patience, hospitality, contemplation and refinement.
Osmanthus can evoke the atmosphere of an autumn garden and the literary traditions surrounding the Moon, while jasmine carries memories of tea, flowers and southern landscapes.
Agarwood and sandalwood, meanwhile, can connect contemporary consumers with incense traditions that once belonged to scholars, temples and ritual spaces. What interests me as a fragrance fan is that these ingredients can communicate something even before we know their names.
A scent built around tea, woods, herbs or flowers can quietly suggest a particular landscape, season, memory or way of life. In this sense, contemporary Chinese perfumery is not simply searching for a recognizable “Chinese smell;” it is exploring how Chinese culture itself can be translated through the sense of smell.
This also explains why the revival of traditional fragrance feels connected to the broader return of guochao (literally “national tide” but referring to anything from tech to toys to food to fashion infused with traditional Chinese cultural elements), the growing desire among younger Chinese consumers to rediscover traditional aesthetics and reinterpret them through contemporary life.
Instead of reproducing the past exactly as it was, modern creators are selecting fragments of it, maybe an ingredient, a poem, a medicinal herb, a tea ceremony, a garden, an old painting, and giving them a new sensory form. The result can be surprisingly intimate. A bottle of perfume may contain no literal image of China, yet a combination of smoky woods, delicate flowers, green tea and herbal notes can create an atmosphere that feels connected to it. Perhaps this is one of the most fascinating possibilities of fragrance: Unlike language, it does not need to explain where a culture comes from. It can simply allow us to experience it.
And for someone from Egypt, another ancient fragrance civilization with its own rich vocabulary of resins, oils, flowers and sacred aromas, this makes the comparison even more intriguing.
So I leave you to ponder the question:
Can two civilizations tell their stories through scent without saying a single word?
FEATURED IMAGE: COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
EDITED BY ELSBETH VAN PARIDON
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