What is the traditional way of tasting incense for ancient literati?

There is a poem by Luo Yin in the Five Dynasties: "When you sink into the water, you can eat Bai Zhen, and the Boshan furnace warms the jade building. Poor gentlemen do things for no reason. He is greedy for incense and forgets himself. " In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, incense was very common. In the Song Dynasty, due to the high standard of material life advocated and promoted by the scholar-officials, the traditional culture of China, such as piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, food, wine and tea, laid the foundation stone, showing a broad and vigorous trend. Incense has also become an art, and dignitaries and literati often get together to smell the incense and do the initial ceremony.

In Chinese mainland, the birthplace of incense culture, for more than a thousand years after the Tang and Song Dynasties, due to frequent wars, the spiritual life of literati tended to be lax, and the ceremony of incense banquet, like pure art forms such as poetry, ci, music, dance and chess, also declined day by day. This incense spread all the way to the late Qing Dynasty, and finally the fire was exhausted in stormy weather.