Established by the Los Angeles-based Institute for Art and Olfaction, the Art and Olfaction Awards are known as the “Oscars of independent perfumery.” While their winners are usually from Western countries, this year the Taiwanese brand Pan Seven International (P.Seven) won an award in the “Independent” category with a perfume called “Aged Tea.” Founder Pan Yu Ching has realized her dream of “helping Taiwan get noticed by the world.”

Incense making is a traditional craft integral to Taiwan’s religious culture.

Tea perfumes

Looking at the international fragrance industry, we find that most perfumes are either floral or fruity, while fashions and trends are almost invariably driven by Western cultures. Going against this grain, Pan firmly believes that Asia should take pride in its own scents.

Pan’s award-winning perfume captures the soul of Taiwanese aged tea. “Aged tea” refers to tealeaves that have been stored for more than a decade. Post-­fermentation facilitates the aging of tealeaves, bringing out aromas different from those of fresh leaves. Progressively, aging leaves develop scents evocative of plums, camphor, ginseng, and so on. The top notes of P.Seven’s “Aged Tea” include the refreshing smell of green tea, from which the fragrance of wood smoke gradually emerges. With the passing of these earlier notes, we then perceive the sweetness of smoked plums and dried longans. Pan has given consummate expression to the mellow taste of aged tea, a subtle maturity that only time can bestow.

“Ten years ago Taiwan had no perfume industry,” Pan tells us. It was while she was working as a tea master that she discovered her acute sense of smell. Enamored of Taiwanese teas, she came up with the idea of collecting tea fragrances, and eventually founded P.Seven. As Taiwanese teas had long been known to the world for their high quality, Pan decided to specialize in tea perfumes.

Pan’s ambition is to “turn Taiwan Tea Perfume into a classic.” She and her team spent a year and a half developing their range of perfumes. After trying out more than 200 blends, their first product—called “[mor] Tea Parfum”—was born. Its top notes feature the scent of Taiwan cypress, while Jin Xuan (a variety of oolong tea) is part of its sweet and milky middle notes. The base notes comprise borneol, spikenard, and other ingredients that are used to make inksticks, offering a lingering sense of literary refinement. Weaving together Taiwan’s endemic flora, a distinctly local variety of tea, and Oriental calligraphy, this perfume is profoundly Taiwanese. Its understated elegance attracted the attention of Japanese media, and many Japanese tourists looking for gifts and souvenirs have been inquiring about it. [Mor] Tea Parfum also garnered warm praise when it was exhibited in Hong Kong. These enthusiastic responses from overseas have contributed to Pan’s local fame.

Pan’s first export sales were to Japan, and now the prestigious Art and Olfaction Award has brought her Taiwanese tea perfumes to the notice of distributors from Estonia, Budapest, New York, and Vietnam. Pan has succeeded in marketing Taiwan’s scents on the global stage.

“Aged Tea,” a perfume carrying distinctly Taiwanese scents, won an “Independent” award at the Art and Olfaction Awards, the “Oscars of independent perfumery.”

Blessed with an abundance of woodlands and a wide variety of endemic plants, Taiwan provides an inexhaustible source of inspiration for perfumers.

P.Seven uses Taiwanese tea perfumes to reinterpret authentically Asian aromas, winning international acclaim.

Marketing Taiwan

As part of her brand management, Pan organizes “aroma exhibition tours” that encourage visitors to explore their olfactory sense. Her first tour highlighted Taiwan’s Aboriginal cultures, using scented ingredients such as mountain pepper (Litsea cubeba), millet wine, areca palm flowers, and shell ginger leaves to reinterpret indigenous hunting, rituals, and animist beliefs. P.Seven produced a series of perfumes to accompany this tour, including “Hunter,” “Animism,” and “Flower of Life.” Subsequent exhibitions have focused on Hakka and Minnan cultures, showcasing perfumes like “Oriental Beauty,” which is primarily based on the eponymous tea, and “Ruby,” which derives its bittersweetness from a combination of osmanthus and the black tea of Sun Moon Lake. By appealing to our sense of smell, these exhibitions present Taiwan as an island of rich ethnic and cultural diversity.

In addition to creating perfumes, Pan designs scents that help institutions and companies boost their brand identity. For example, she was commissioned by a seaside hotel to make a room aroma that had a “sunny” flavor. The hotel’s environment was very humid, and the cleaning staff found it impossible to completely eliminate the musty odor inside. By summoning up the warmth of sunshine, Pan’s aroma was able to neutralize the unpleasant smell in a natural way.

The concept of olfactory marketing is not only embraced by private businesses conscious of their own brand images, but it also has a role to play in larger, national contexts. For the tenth anniversary of the Taoyuan International Airport Corporation, Pan created a perfume called “Breath Taiwan,” drawing inspiration from the island’s forests, temples, and tea culture. She used Taiwan cypress and cedar to bring out the smells of our woodlands; incense to convey the warmth of local temples; and jasmine tea to evoke Taiwanese hospitality. “Breath Taiwan” delineates the natural and cultural contours of the island.

P.Seven's "aroma exhibition tours" showcase Taiwan's cultural diversity by offering a feast for the nose. (courtesy of P.Seven)

Reinventing incense

It is not just Taiwan’s perfumes that have been brought to the wider world. Incense-­making is a traditional Taiwanese craft. During the economic boom of the 1970s, many people built temples to express gratitude for their financial success. This phenomenon boosted the prosperity of Taiwan’s incense ­industry.

With the importation of cheap incense, however, the market underwent seismic shifts. The middlemen were all but wiped out, and many incense factories folded. Those traditional incense businesses that wished to continue had to be proactive to achieve a breakthrough. Li Qing Cheng Sandalwood has been producing incense for 70 years. While the company traditionally supplied incense shops and wholesalers, the third-­generation owner, Li Jianlin, has expanded his customer base through e-­commerce, which enables him to sell directly to independent customers.

Thanks to the vast reach of the Internet, Li is able to venture into foreign markets and serve customers in the USA, Germany, and Mexico. Never afraid of challenges, Li accepted a special order and plunged himself into manufacturing one of the least common products in the industry: ingot-shaped incense.

Li tells us that the most widely available incense products are various types of sticks and coils. Cones (or “pagodas”) are less common, and cones shaped as ingots are even rarer. Incense makers that produce ingots are hard to find, especially ones that accept customization. In modern Taiwan, incense is no longer confined to religious and ritual purposes. Many people burn incense in their daily lives simply to create a fragrant atmosphere, and to attain a sense of serenity. For Li, incense cones in special shapes have enormous market potential. Relying on Taiwan’s manufacturing prowess, he engaged a company to design compression molding machines and automatic slicers. Now, in an air-­conditioned room inside Li’s factory, we can observe how his staff produce ingots that smell of sandalwood and Chinese medicinal herbs on machines that conform to European safety standards—a sight that overturns our stereo­types of the traditional incense industry.

The machine-made ingots are then carefully fettled by hand. The finished product demonstrates such finesse that discerning customers have begun to notice it. At present, Li’s ingot incense is routinely exported to Singapore and Malaysia. Aiming to expand his production capacity, Li wishes to become Taiwan’s biggest supplier of ingot incense, and bring Taiwanese incense to the world.

Li Jianlin now manages Li Qing Cheng Sandalwood, continuing the traditional craft of incense making.

An incense maker has to turn the bamboo sticks rapidly while he stirs up whirls of incense powder. This is a process that really tests his skills. 

An incense maker has to be gentle and patient when dipping the bamboo sticks in water. Li Qing Cheng sets great store by this process.

Incense making

This newly established production line does not distract Li from the traditional craft of incense making that he inherited from his grandfather. An assortment of incense powders is stored in another section of his factory: Taiwan incense cedar (Calocedrus formosana), Chinese medicinal herbs, sandalwood from various countries, agarwood, and so on. Li picks up a handful of bamboo sticks, slowly dips two-thirds of their length into a vat of water, gradually lifts them, and shakes off the excess water. This is to prepare the sticks for incense making. Great care must be taken to ensure that they are evenly wetted.

Having completed this preliminary step, Li fans out the sticks, holds them above a container full of incense powder, and rapidly showers them with the powder. We see Li swiftly turning the sticks with a swirling motion while he stirs up whirls of incense powder. He has to do this very quickly, or the sticks will adhere to each other, and will not be evenly coated with powder. This is a process that really tests the skills of an incense maker. Next, Li puts the sticks in a machine that helps shake off excess powder. The entire procedure—from dipping and fanning out the sticks to swirling and shaking them—has to be performed four or five times. It will then take several days to dry the sticks. The last step is to dye and dry the uncoated end.

Li Qing Cheng Sandalwood, which has successfully established an online presence, often has visitors from various backgrounds. Despite his busy work, Li Jianlin takes pleasure in sharing his incense-making skills. He has welcomed not only local visitors but also many foreign tourists who are interested in traditional Taiwanese crafts. Li remembers a German tourist visiting the factory to film the process of incense making for his daughter, who loves Taiwanese incense. There was even a nun from France who asked Li to teach her how to make incense because she couldn’t find anything like it where she lived. Although they didn’t understand each other’s language, Li was able to pass on the basic skills through physical demonstration, and Taiwan’s traditional incense has made its way into a French convent.

Workers have to finish the machine-made ingots by hand, smoothing out their rough edges.

Traditional incense makers are trying to open up new markets, bringing Taiwan’s scents to the wider world.