The Tree
Aquilaria sinensis
A tree species associated with the agarwood traditions of southern China.
Heritage / Agarwood Culture
Agarwood Culture
莞香
Fragrance, place and cultural memory.
A living tradition rooted in Dongguan, shaped through trees, craft, trade and time.
01 · What Is Guanxiang?
More than fragrant wood.
Guanxiang (莞香) is a local tradition of agarwood deeply associated with Dongguan in southern China. At its centre is agarwood — the resin-rich material that forms within certain trees under particular conditions — but Guanxiang is more than the material itself.
It encompasses the knowledge and practices that have developed around growing the trees, encouraging agarwood formation, harvesting and refining the fragrant material, as well as the ways it has been traded, appreciated and used over time.
Understanding Guanxiang therefore begins with an important distinction: the tree, the agarwood it may produce, and the cultural tradition that has grown around them are closely connected, but they are not the same thing.
The Material
Agarwood
Resin-rich fragrant wood that develops within the tree under particular conditions.
The Tradition
Guanxiang · 莞香
The local knowledge, craft and cultural practices surrounding agarwood in Dongguan.
02 · Rooted in Dongguan
A tradition shaped by place.
Guanxiang takes its name and cultural identity from Dongguan. Over time, the cultivation of agarwood-producing trees, the knowledge of forming and refining agarwood, and the trade and use of fragrance became closely woven into the life of the region.
By the Ming and Qing periods, Dongguan had developed an established agarwood trade, with Liaobu emerging as an important gathering place for fragrant materials.
This relationship between landscape, skilled practice and exchange is what gives Guanxiang its strong sense of place. Dongguan is not simply where the material was produced; it is where a wider culture of growing, making, trading and appreciating agarwood took shape over generations.
03 · From Tree to Agarwood
Fragrance takes time.
Agarwood does not simply exist throughout the tree. It develops when the living tree responds to injury and other stresses, gradually forming resin-rich wood in affected areas.
In the tradition of Guanxiang, people learned to work with this process over long periods of time. Trees are cultivated and carefully tended; traditional techniques may be used to encourage agarwood formation; and the developing fragrant material is left to mature before it is harvested at an appropriate time.
Harvesting is only part of the process. The collected wood must then be carefully refined. One important traditional practice, known as lixiang (理香), removes the pale, non-resinous wood to reveal and preserve the darker fragrant material within.
From growing the tree to forming, harvesting and refining agarwood, the process may extend across many years.
Time is not simply something that passes around Guanxiang — it is part of the knowledge embedded in the tradition.
04 · The Incense Market of Liaobu
Where fragrance became exchange.
By the Ming and Qing periods, Liaobu had become an important gathering place for Guanxiang. Agarwood of different types and grades was brought here for trade, connecting the fragrant material produced across Dongguan with merchants and markets beyond the region.
The market was significant enough to enter the historical record. Writing around the transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty, Guangdong scholar Qu Dajun described an incense market at Liaobu in his Guangdong Xinyu (New Accounts of Guangdong), noting that different varieties of Guanxiang gathered there.
Liaobu was therefore more than a place where agarwood was bought and sold. Around the movement of fragrance developed a commercial and social space shaped by growers, craftspeople, merchants and local communities. The incense market became part of the cultural landscape through which Guanxiang was known and circulated.
Today, the tradition of the Liaobu Incense Market (寮步香市) is recognised as a national-level representative item of China’s intangible cultural heritage, inscribed in 2014 in the category of folk customs.
05 · Along the Fragrance Routes
From a local tradition to a wider world.
Guanxiang did not remain within the places where it was grown and made. Through markets such as Liaobu and the waterways of the Pearl River region, fragrant wood entered wider networks of exchange, travelling to consumers and trading centres across China and beyond.
Historical accounts describe Guanxiang moving northwards into major markets, while local records connect the trade around Dongguan with river and coastal routes. Fragrance was therefore not only part of local life; it also linked Dongguan with a much larger world of commerce, connoisseurship and cultural exchange.
Hong Kong forms another part of this history. Agarwood-producing trees were historically cultivated in areas that are now part of Hong Kong, and fragrant wood was transported through local settlements and harbours. This history has also given rise to a widely circulated explanation of the name “Hong Kong” — literally “Fragrant Harbour” — connecting it with the historical trade in fragrant wood.
The origin of the name, however, is not established by a single uncontested account. Rather than treating the story as a certainty, it offers a glimpse of how deeply fragrance, trade and place have become intertwined in the cultural memory of the Pearl River estuary.
Dongguan
Liaobu
Pearl River Estuary
Hong Kong
Wider Trading Networks
06 · A Living Heritage
Heritage lives through practice.
Guanxiang is not only part of Dongguan’s history. Its knowledge and practices continue to be carried, taught and renewed in the present.
In 2014, Traditional Incense Making Techniques (Guanxiang Making Techniques) was inscribed on China’s national list of representative intangible cultural heritage, recognising a body of knowledge that extends from cultivating and obtaining fragrant material to refining and working with agarwood. The traditional practice of the Liaobu Incense Market was also included at national level in the same year, under the category of folk customs.
More recent heritage recognition in Dongguan has continued to broaden this picture. The city’s seventh group of municipal-level representative heritage projects includes Guanxiang Cultivation and Making Techniques and Guanxiang (Nü’erxiang) Incense-Use Customs, reflecting attention not only to making agarwood, but also to cultivation and the cultural practices surrounding its use.
These different forms of recognition point to something larger than the preservation of an object. What is being carried forward is a living body of knowledge — ways of growing, observing, making, using and understanding fragrance, together with the memories and social practices that give them meaning.
National · 2014
传统香制作技艺（莞香制作技艺）
Traditional Skills寮步香市
Folk CustomsMunicipal · 2025
莞香种植与制作技艺
Traditional Skills莞香（女儿香）用香习俗
Folk CustomsWhat is being carried forward is not simply an object, but a living body of knowledge.
Knowledge · Practice · People · Continuity
07 · Guanxiang Today
A tradition still taking root.
Guanxiang continues to be part of Dongguan’s cultural and ecological landscape. Agarwood-producing trees are still cultivated and conserved, traditional knowledge continues to be practised, and new public spaces are bringing people into closer contact with the material, craft and culture of fragrance.
Conservation is one part of this continuing story. Dongguan’s botanical and forestry programmes include Aquilaria sinensis among the region’s characteristic plants, while specialised collections help preserve living plant resources and support public education.
The tradition also remains connected to practice. In Dalingshan, the Guanxiang Intangible Cultural Heritage Botanical Garden combines the conservation of agarwood-producing trees with the transmission and presentation of Guanxiang-making techniques. Elsewhere in Dongguan, cultural spaces and activities introduce the public to the history, craft and sensory experience of fragrance.
These contemporary forms may differ from the incense markets and working landscapes of earlier centuries, but they show how heritage continues: not by remaining unchanged, but by being cultivated, practised, studied and encountered again.
Cultivation
Knowledge
Public Culture
Continuity
08 · Continue Exploring
Follow the story of Guanxiang.
Guanxiang can be approached through more than history and craft. Follow its routes through the Pearl River estuary, or explore how Guanyi is bringing this living tradition into contemporary cultural storytelling.
Story
Incense, Dongguan Agarwood and Hong Kong
Trace the cultural connections between Dongguan’s agarwood traditions, the historic incense market of Liaobu and the waterways of the Pearl River estuary — including the enduring stories that connect fragrance with Hong Kong.
Read the StoryProject · Ongoing
Xunxiangji · 寻香记
An ongoing cultural film project exploring Dongguan agarwood through memory, craft and place, and seeking contemporary ways to encounter a tradition carried across generations.
Discover the Project