Hebei Gucheng Sandalwood Incense Coils

These are great fun. Not great incense, but great fun. They are available on eBay for around £6 a box including postage. Inside the box are around 12-15 packets containing the coils. There are two coils in each pack, and - here's the tricky part - they are one inside the other, so you have to separate the two coils before burning. There is a cute little tin stand like a bird, for holding the coil, but I've lost mine! I rigged up a Heath Robinson contraption (or a Rube Goldberg machine for American readers) in order to hold the coil. I think it's a really fun way of burning incense - something a little bit different. There are other coils - I reviewed one a couple of years ago - some nasty smelling insect repellent incense coil that I didn't like. This one is made by Hebei Gucheng in China, where, as in Japan and Tibet/Nepal, they extrude a fragrant paste into stick or coil shapes rather than putting a paste onto a bamboo stick.

It has a basic sandalwood aroma, not particularly good. I like sandalwood but I don't burn this particular one very often to be honest. There is just too much faff for too little reward. And now that I have lost the holder I think I'll just chuck the rest away.  I mean, it's a not a bad incense, there are plenty, plenty worse than this, it's just that even with a poor incense, you can just pick it up, light it, and walk away. So a poor incense can be used to quickly cover up the smell of the drains or a nasty session in the toilet, but by the time you'd set up and lit this incense, the bad smell would have knocked you out.

Date: Feb 2017   Score: 19

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