TEHRAN, Jan 8 - In Vietnam's "incense village", dozens are hard at work dying, drying and whittling down bamboo bark to make the fragrant sticks ahead of the busy lunar new year holiday.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - It is the most frantic time of year for workers in the cottage industry in Quang Phu Cau village on the outskirts of Hanoi, where families have been making incense for more than a century -- a great source of pride for many.
Sales tick up every year ahead of and during the Tet lunar new year in February, when throngs of people crowd into temples to light incense during worship, or burn the sticks on the ancestral altar at home.
Hoa's family started making the sticks more than 100 years ago and her mother still pitches in along with her teenage daughter who helps out after school.
Selling her sticks to central Vietnam, Hoa can earn up to $430 a month leading up to Tet, a tidy sum in the country where the average monthly income is $195.
Most households in the alleys of Quang Phu Cau are involved in the ancient trade.
After, women donning cloth face masks coat the dried sticks with aromatic incense paste before redrying them and shipping them off for packaging.
The work offers more than just pride for many in Quang Phu Cau: like Hoa, many earn good money making incense compared to factory work nearby.
Source: AFP
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