Incense Pills and Incense Cakes
Incense paste shaped into pills, cakes, and beads—burnable or wearable, one of the oldest forms of blended incense.
Incense pills and incense cakes are the most traditional forming methods of blended incense, prevalent long before stick incense.
Incense Pills
Incense paste is rolled into small pills and shade-dried. They can be "burned" (heated over indirect fire), "held in the mouth" (to freshen breath and regulate qi), or "worn" (placed in a sachet).Wearing Incense at Dragon Boat Festival、Portable Incense Beadsall originate from this.
Incense Cakes (Incense Cake Pills)
Pressed flat and round with wooden molds or by hand, often stamped with patterns, used for indirect-fire heating (placed on a mica plate for slow heating), and can also serve as material for seal incense.
Incense Beads
Incense paste is rolled into beads and strung into bracelets and necklaces; this is the advanced form of "wearing incense," which both wards off impurities and delights the senses. The incense plaques and incense beads revived by people today mostly follow this tradition.