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Mon,Aug 19,2013
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Chinese fragrance more precious than gold

By Wang Jie  (Shanghai Daily)    08:12, August 19, 2013
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Many rich Chinese are buying luxury brands of famous designer perfumes, but the ultimate luxury fragrance — one far costly than gold — is agarwood or chen xiang (沉香), an ancient Oriental fragrance.

Increasingly Chinese are rediscovering their appreciation for agarwood, which played a role as incense and oil in religious rituals throughout Asia and the Middle East. The deeply aromatic fragrance is considered an aid to meditation and was very popular in ancient China.

Pieces of natural wood and fragrant carvings are sought by collectors. Incense and essential oil are precious. Whenever it is burned, heated or simply placed at room temperature, it gives off a pleasant aroma — from subtle to intense.

What could be more luxurious than simply burning a piece of high-quality chen xiang that costs 10,000 yuan (US$1,629) per gram of highest quality and savoring the fragrance. And then it’s gone, up in smoke. But worth it, many people say.

Arguably the most costly fragrance in the world is complex, layered and difficult to describe. It is sweet, rich and deep but balanced. It’s also called earthy, smoky and sweet — deeply pleasing.

For most people, chen xiang (literally “wood with mellow fragrance”) is just a piece of rotten wood.

It literally is rotten. Agarwood is a dark resinous heartwood that forms in aquilaria and gyrinops trees when they become infected with a particular fungus. Before infection, the heartwood is relative pale in color, but the tree produces a dark aromatic resin in response to the attack. It is this resinous wood that is valued in many cultures.

The trees are large evergreens native to Southeast Asia, but most have been cut down and now trees are commercially raised and infected with fungus in a long process.

The best and most expensive chen xiang is natural and old, and some areas produce better wood than others. Although commercial agarwood has an alluring fragrance, there’s nothing like the real thing.

The cost is so high because trees in nature are scarce, and the commercial farming and processing is costly. Throughout the region, locals hunt for old wood and may happen upon buried pieces that they treat like gold.

Trees grow in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and India. Only very small amount is produced.

For chen xiang collector Wang Yinan, this is the ultimate luxury, without parallel.

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(Editor:LiQian、Ye Xin)

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