Drying Insense Stick

The Incense Sticks in Vietnam.

This incense sticks photo was taken in Quang Tu Cau commune, Ha Noi, Vietnam. This place has been well-known for this product for more than a century.

In the photos, two figures are drying the incense sticks outdoors and protecting themselves from the sun, those farmers also wore leave hats – a traditional hat of the Vietnamese.

In a high season such as one or two months before Lunar New Year, the whole village will be covered by a red color on the roads, and courtyards with the sun. The sticks are collected and put into bunches in order to be easy to collect and move. Those bunches create a red background in a big picture.

Incense sticks play an important role in the spiritual lives of Vietnamese people. They are usually used in temples or at homes for worshipping Buddha or ancestors.

The incense sticks, made from bamboo, are split into thin sticks and dipped in pink dye. They are then dried outdoors and rolled with a local mixture of herbs. Finally, they have dried again before selling or using.

The concept of Vietnamese people is that their ancestors are in the sky when the incense stick is inserted into the incense bowl as if it is put into mother's earth. When those sticks were in the fire, there will have smoke and the aroma of herbs around, and the Vietnamese people believed that the smoke rises to the sky as if expressing human desire, respect, nostalgia, love, and gratitude to the ancestors, to the gods to the most sacred heavens.