I stopped by a porch to speak with a white-haired elder who was drying finished incense sticks. They paused their work to chat eagerly. They said they didn’t know exactly when this traditional craft began but estimated it to be hundreds of years old. As a child, they had learned from their parents and grandparents how to whittle incense sticks, make incense powder, and bind it. All the ingredients for the incense are sourced from nature. Apricot branches are primarily used, cut into long segments, split, and finely whittled into shiny incense sticks. The incense powder is made from the bark of red cotton trees, pine wood, sawdust, and leaves of Bau Hat trees, which are found in the forest. These leaves help to bind all of the ingredients.

The bark and leaves are dried, crumbled, ground into a powder, and mixed with sawdust and the binding agent. The sticks are dipped up to four times in this mixture, with the bases dyed red. They are dried to produce the final product. Drying the incense depends heavily on the weather, so the villagers always hope for sunny and dry days, on which it takes only one day to dry a batch. If the weather is overcast, it can take three or four days to thoroughly dry the incense.