Sandalwood Ritual Goose Pear Boudoir Incense | Pear & Agarwood Blend - 1.06 oz

In the seventh year of the Baoda era of Southern Tang (949 CE), Emperor Yuanzong held a grand "Inner Incense Banquet" at the palace, displaying ninety-two rare fragrances. But what later generations could never forget was his son Li Yu's incense — the one that burned inside the bed curtains.

Li Yu was the last ruler of Southern Tang — a disastrous king, but the greatest lyric poet the world has ever known. For the woman he loved, he crafted a boudoir incense with his own hands. He took an eli — an ancient pear variety, massive in fruit and intoxicating in fragrance — hollowed out its core, filled it with powdered agarwood and sandalwood, sealed the top, and steamed it repeatedly over water, letting the pear's sweet juice seep into every fiber of the wood. When burned, the smoke was sweet, moist, and dreamily fragrant — soothing the spirit, lulling one toward sleep. The formula was later recorded in the Song dynasty Chen Shi Xiangpu as "Lord Li of Jiangnan's Bed-Curtain Incense." A Southern Tang palace poem reads: "Within the curtains there is a way to hold love — light a slanting wisp of goose pear incense."

Li Yu reigned for fifteen years before the Song army extinguished his kingdom. Legend says he was ultimately poisoned — and the cause was that his poetry was simply too good. The poem that enraged Emperor Taizong contained the famous lines: "If you ask me how much sorrow there is — it is like a river of spring water flowing east." Some scholars believe that as he wrote these lines, the incense burning in his curtained bed was the very goose pear boudoir incense he had once blended himself. And in Chinese, the word for "pear" — li — is a homophone for "parting" — li. Within the sweet warmth of goose pear incense, there has always been a thread of sorrow, the bitterness of farewell.