Tian Gou Incense Sticks | Mountain Breath

The beast that always knew which way the air was moving.

High in the western mountains of old China, the classic texts describe a creature called the Tian Gou. It looks like a wildcat with a white head, and its cry sounds like "liu liu," a clear note that carries through fog. The people who shared those mountains believed its senses reached where ours can't, that it always knew which path was open and which air was worth breathing. The books say it warded off misfortune. The mountain people just knew: where the white-headed one walks, the haze lifts.

Tian Gou incense is designed for mornings that feel heavy before they've even started, evoking the feeling of standing among distant peaks and bamboo forests after rainfall. Our formula of Tian Gou incense is gentle enough specially to soothe allergic rhinitis, unblock stuffy noses, and warm fragile lung qi for all-season defense.

You know those weeks.

The windows close, the heat kicks on, and the apartment goes into its sealed-up season. The air is dry and stale, and the room at 7 looks exactly like the room at midnight. In spring it's pollen instead, and the windows stay shut again. Either way, the room isn't wrong. It's just heavy. You can't change the season. You can change the first ten minutes of your morning. It's an old way of starting a day. One stick, one match, and the day gets to start over.

What's it smell like?

Nobody agrees on how to describe a smell. Then we invited four people, Queenie (customer service team), Kai (herbal grower), Michael (aroma evaluator) and Ann (neighbor of workshop), to share their feelings especially whatever showed up in their heads.

Queenie: My grandma's old books.
Kai: Sit in the attic and watch the sunrise.
Michael: Walking in the forest after rain.
Ann: A window open with a crackle in the winter.

Why I made this one?

I grew up around incense and I'm the 5th-gen. What I have never done is watch an American smell it for the first time. That sounds like a small thing. It is not, because almost everything I could tell you about Panda Incense is something you have no way to check.

There is a good reason to be careful with incense. A lot of what leaves China is a thin stick dipped in fragrance oil and dried. It smells loud for two minutes, and then the room smells like a hotel lobby. In a photograph, a one dollar box and a hundred dollar box look the same. So the fair question is the one you are already asking. How would I know what I’m getting, and what’s really in it?

Here is what I can put on the table. All our incense are made from pure herbs, ground to powder and pressed with a plant- based binder. No fragrance oil, no accelerates, and clean burn with low smoke.

This is one of incense in the Shan Hai Guardians line, and each beast in the book has its own formula.

I still do not know whether that is something people here want. And this is the part I am still learning. I have made incense my whole life and I have never had to explain it to someone who did not grow up around it. What a plant binder is, why a stick should not have a charcoal core, how much important a formula is. Those things are invisible in a photograph, but I think it is visible in a smell and your status can tell you.

So if you are not sure, write to us before you buy. I would rather answer twenty questions than have a box sit on your shelf unlit.

• Key botanical ingredients: Cypress Wood, Fritillaria, Polygonatum, Lily Bulb, Scrophularia
  
• Dimensions: Full Size with 120 incense sticks. (Approx. 40 minutes burn time per stick)