Incense in The Wind: Xiang Lian Incense

Saturday, 17 May 2025

Xiang Lian Incense

An attractively packaged box of wood based Chinese incense in 11 tubes of different fragranced wood based thin dhoop sticks. Available from Temu, Shein, AliExpress, Amazon, and other places as the same set of 11, generally for around £8. Also available as individual tubes in the UK from DylansDen for £3.00 each.

Conclusion

Moderately pleasant. Best burned at a distance in a well ventilated room. The scents are not strong, and are limited in scope - all of them are basically smouldering wood, but with patience and understanding can be attractive. Low price when bought as a set. Not worth buying separately, but for around £8 it's worth a go, and you get a lot of incense for your money (though quite mild, you can burn several sticks at a time if you'd like your incense to make more of an impression). Unlikely to get anyone excited, and some may be disappointed by the narrow scope of the fragrance, and the soft harshness of the burning wood, but overall a moderately pleasant experience involving some legendary fragrant woods.

I think on the whole I leaned quite favourably in the scores, as I want to be more open to Asian fragranced wood incense as I'm learning about it; so being more positive and affirmative, more glass half full than half empty, is a way for me to be more accepting. As of May 2025, I still have a lot of Chinese and Japanese incense to work through, and I'm aware that these Chinese sticks are very cheap, so the fragrant woods will not be top quality, but I'm struggling to remain positive toward Asian fragranced wood incense, particularly Chinese.

However, the same could be said of the Japanese sticks I've been working through. They may be more expensive than the Chinese sticks, and there may be a little bit more adventure in the construction of the scent profile (these Xiang Lian are fairly simple - the stated ingredients are just wood powder and binding powder, though I suspect a little fragrance oil has been added, though not much), but I think the wood powder quality is about the same in the Japanese sticks I've been exploring - though assisted by fragrance oils. I think you need to go up to silly prices to get a proper oil rich agarwood powder, and I'm not willing to spend hundreds of pounds on one box of incense that is going to, for me - your mileage may vary - likely end up smelling no better than something like Sai Oudh made in Vrindavan in northern India from a synthetic but beautiful oudh oil, and which costs only £2 for 20gm.

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