"Xiaotian in Song Dynasty" The spice used by Song people to burn incense is actually litchi shells.

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Recently, shopping malls are always attracted by some aromatherapy candle shops. Those scented candles are displayed in the exquisite window, next to a series of perfumes and ointments. Others often put an aromatherapy lamp on the desk in the office and spray mist and essential oil dimly.

I don't know when incense sticks became the representative of elegant life. In fact, this trend did not rise from Europe. Where did it come from?

Friends who know a little about Japanese culture should know that there are "three elegant ways" in Japan: tea ceremony, flower way and fragrant way. China Song Dynasty was also popular with "four elegance": ordering tea, arranging flowers, burning incense and hanging pictures. Is this a coincidence? Of course not.

Japan's "Sanyadao" was actually handed down from the Song Dynasty, and the flower arrangement in the Song Dynasty spread to Japan and evolved into a flower path; The tea ordered in the Song Dynasty spread to Japan and evolved into a tea ceremony, while the incense burned in the Song Dynasty spread to Japan and evolved into a fragrant road.

Let's talk about burning incense today.

Song people called burning incense "burning incense". When we talk about burning incense today, we always associate it with "burning incense to worship Buddha", but what people said in the Song Dynasty has nothing to do with the activities of worshipping God and Buddha, and refers to a literati's elegant thing juxtaposed with ordering tea and arranging flowers. It was popular to order tea, arrange flowers and burn incense in Song Dynasty. Literati usually burn a furnace of incense when they meet, hold banquets, read books and taste tea, so the elegant fragrance is refreshing.

In fact, people in the Song Dynasty did not burn spices directly, but roasted them with charcoal fire, which was more like "roasting incense" than "burning incense". To tell the truth, when it comes to the word "roast", I can't help but think of roast lamb chops, which are delicious and deserve some naan. Haha, I can think of roast lamb chops from elegant incense burning. I really have a heart for eating goods.

Just kidding. Of course, it can't be like the barbecue when the literati baked spices in the Song Dynasty. Otherwise, it will be a spoil the fun, right? Why don't I briefly introduce the general process of burning incense in Song Dynasty?

In Song Dynasty, people used to pound agarwood, sandalwood, Long Xianxiang and other spices into powder, add honey and fruit juice, make small fragrant pills like today's tablets, and dry them for later use. This modulated fragrance was called "lotus fragrance" in the Song Dynasty.

When burning incense, first put the refined charcoal ash into the incense burner, poke a small hole with a special incense stick, put a piece of red-hot charcoal, cover it with a layer of charcoal ash, pile the charcoal ash into a hill shape with a incense shovel, and then poke several ventilated small holes with a incense stick to keep the charcoal inside from going out.

Then, put a piece of silver on the charcoal ash, put a small fragrant pill on the silver, and bake the fragrance through the heat of the charcoal ash, thus emitting fragrance. This method of burning incense was called "burning incense after burning" in the Song Dynasty, and it was the most mainstream form of burning incense in the Song Dynasty.

After the Song Dynasty, the popular incense burning method was to first make the spices into thread incense, which was called "thread incense". When burning incense, the incense is directly ignited, and the fragrance is stimulated by burning. So, what are the advantages of the Song-style "fire-separated incense" compared with the direct lighting of spices?

If we ask people in Song Dynasty this question, they will tell you that incense can avoid the problem of smoking. I think it is much less to produce PM2.5 than to burn incense directly, which is more in line with the spirit of environmental protection. Yang Wanli, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote a poem "Burning Incense", which said: "The poet drooled over his cologne, but he made the fragrance disappear." -"There is fragrance and no smoke" is the characteristic of burning incense in the Song Dynasty.

People in the Song Dynasty will also tell you that the fragrance emitted by incense will not be too strong. You know, people in the Song Dynasty burn incense, pursuing elegant and elegant fragrance, and don't like too strong fragrance. The fragrance is too strong, and the Song people think it is tacky and indecent. Nowadays, wearing a diamond ring is a fashion. If ten fingers wear ten diamond rings, it is vulgar to show off.

When people in Song Dynasty burned incense, if they found that the fragrance was strong, they knew that the charcoal fire was too hot and needed to add charcoal ash to control the firepower. If the fragrance is too weak, it means that the heat is not enough. You can scrape the charcoal ash thin and raise the temperature. In other words, fireproof incense has another advantage: it can adjust the intensity of fragrance by controlling firepower.

But burning incense with fire also has disadvantages: it is too troublesome to operate, and the person in charge of burning incense must have the ability to taste the fragrance and the skill of controlling the temperature. In contrast, it is not difficult to light a thread of incense to burn incense for future generations. The same is true of ordering tea in Song Dynasty. The whole process is very complicated. How convenient is it to make tea today But it is precisely because there is a technical threshold for burning incense and ordering tea that not everyone can operate it and form an elegant art. Without the threshold, there is no art.

Burning incense was very popular among the literati in the Song Dynasty. Many famous celebrities in the Song Dynasty, such as Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Li Qingzhao and Lu You, not only liked burning incense, but also were experts in making incense. As I said before, Song people used to use "Hexiang" when burning incense. Synthetic spices need to be prepared manually. Different spices are prepared in different proportions, and the fragrance is different.

Su Shi is good at blending incense. When baking, he can give off fresh plum blossom fragrance. This side was derived from Han Qi, a famous minister in the Song Dynasty, hence the name "Han Wei workers and peasants to Mei". Su Shi's protege, Huang Tingjian, is a master of incense making. In the Song Dynasty, there were four famous literati who combined incense: Yi Hexiang, Yi Kexiang, Shen Jingxiang and Xiao Zongxiang, which were collectively called "Four Incense of Huang Taishi" and were concocted by Huang Tingjian.

Once, Huang Tingjian and a monk friend named Hui Hong were traveling in Hunan, and it happened that the elders of Huaguang Temple in Hengshan sent two paintings of Mo Mei. Hui Hong and Huang Tingjian enjoy together under the lamp.

Huang Tingjian: "Brother Hui Hong, this is really a good painting! Good painting! Unfortunately, I can't smell plum blossoms. "

Hui Hong: "What's so difficult about smelling Xiang Mei?"

Hui Hong took a fragrant pill from her bag and put it in the incense burner. Soon, the faint fragrance of plum blossoms floated over.

Huang Tingjian: "Brother Hui Hong, what is this fragrance? It's amazing. "

Hui Hong: "This is the legendary plum fragrance of Han Wei workers and peasants, the unique secret fragrance of Uncle Su."

Huang Tingjian: "So this is Han Wei workers and peasants Xiang Mei?"

Hui Hong: "Sue knows you love incense, but she won't teach you how to make it. Really not a friend. "

Huang Jianting: "That's right. Next time I see Sue, I must discuss it. "

Hui Hong: "The smell of this fragrance, chinese odyssey. It's just that the name' Houmeixiang' is a bit low. "

Huang Tingjian: "Ha, ha, ha, I think it's better to change the name to' Huanshenmei'. The name of dead plum is much more elegant than the original "thick plum fragrance". "

Hui Hong: "Oh, if you meet Su Shixue another day, you should talk to him, hahaha."

Huang Tingjian made a "Wen Si Xiang" with unusual seasonings, such as litchi shells, cloves and pine nuts. That is a very cheap and fragrant perfume. We don't think that Song people can only use precious spices such as agarwood and Long Xianxiang, which are extremely expensive. Litchi shells can be dried and ground into powder, and other common spices can also be made into elegant fragrance.

If you don't believe me, I suggest you do a small experiment: drying litchi shells and heating them in electric mosquito coils will give off a pleasant fragrance. The "four-in-one fragrance" prepared by Luyou uses litchi seeds, orchids, chrysanthemums and cypress fruits. Mashing the four raw materials, refining honey and making pills. Because of the low cost, Lu You derisively called this kind of incense "four in one poverty".

However, we should not think that litchi shells are inferior spices used by the poor in Song Dynasty. This popular spice is also very popular in the royal family. For example, Princess Zhang Guifei, Song Renzong's favorite, likes to use common materials such as litchi shell, neem flower and pine nut film as incense, but doesn't want to use agarwood, sandalwood, Long Xianxiang and musk. Su Shi said with malicious intent: "The nose of a noble person hates dragons and musk deer, so it smells strange." Just like a rich man who is tired of eating delicacies, and then falls in love with eating wild vegetables and wowotou. This Sue is a real poison tongue!

In my opinion, the concept of incense burning in the Song Dynasty is lovely: they look down on a precious imported agarwood and think that its fragrance is too fishy, so it can only be used as medicine, but not incense. However, they will not despise the worthless litchi shells. They think that the compound fragrance made of litchi shell is fragrant and elegant. That is to say, in the concept of Song Dynasty, whether a combination fragrance is elegant or vulgar depends on the fragrance quality of spices, and has nothing to do with the price of raw materials.

This concept of burning incense is exactly what people lack today. I know that many friends today are reviving the style of ordering tea, arranging flowers and burning incense in the Song Dynasty. As mentioned earlier, Japan still retains the tea ceremony, flower path and incense path today. Relatively speaking, the fragrance path is undoubtedly smaller for the simple reason. Today's incense is directly burned with precious spices, and the cost is very high, which is not affordable for ordinary people.

I am sad to see precious spices burned in vain. Why don't we learn from the Song Dynasty, and make some fragrant incense with common raw materials such as orange peel and litchi shell, and try the elegance of the Song Dynasty?