Narrator: At the beginning of the year,
this Vietnamese town turns a sea of pink.
About 70% of Quang Phu Cau village make incense sticks --
that's about 3,000 households --
all in preparation for Tet, or Vietnamese Lunar New Year,
the country's most important holiday.
Narrator: Artisans here have made these colorful incense sticks
for generations, but the industry almost didn't survive.
Many young workers left for more lucrative jobs.
Narrator: Then in 2019, India, the village's biggest customer,
restricted imports of Vietnamese incense sticks.
So Thi had to change his production process
and find buyers within Vietnam.
Through his cooperative, he's been able to stay afloat,
crafting 50,000 sticks a day.
We visited the village's largest factory
to see how it's keeping the incense tradition alive.
Incense sticks have two parts,
the core stick and the incense powder.
Narrator: Once the bark is harvested, farmers bring the bunches here
to be weighed and sold.
Just down the road, villagers carefully split the bark
into smaller sticks
and lay them out to dry in giant stacks around town.
Next, they head to the chopper.
Narrator: With the machine's help,
they can chop tens of thousands of sticks in a day.
Narrator: Which can be up to 16 inches long.
Then they're trucked to Thi's instance factory.
Here, workers sort the stems into bunches.
Then they hand-dip the ends in colorful buckets of dye.
They're dyed either pink,
which represents the lotus, Vietnam's national flower,
or red ,for the country's flag.
Carefully, the bunches are fanned out to dry.
In preparation for the Tet holiday, workers blanket
the village in these pink bunches.
Narrator: Over on the other side of the factory, workers make
the incense powder.
In this village, locally harvested Canarium sap is mixed
with charcoal for the signature black color.
The exact proportions are secret.
Narrator: This mixture gives the sticks their fragrance when burned.
Thi uses only natural herbs to get the right smell.
Once the pink sticks are done drying,
workers feed them into one of these machines.
It automatically coats on the incense powder.
Narrator: Workers dry the sticks a second time.
Narrator: They need good temperature and lots of sun,
because if the incense is wet, it won't burn.
Narrator: Next, workers package up the sticks in plastic.
Today, Thi sells mostly to wholesalers within Vietnam
at 65 cents a bunch.
But like most of this village, Thi used to sell primarily
to India -- about 300 tons a year.
Those sticks used in religious worship were shorter,
and Thi added no fragrance because Indian buyers preferred
to add their own.
India was such a big customer, in the mid-2010s,
90% of its important incense sticks came from Vietnam.
But in 2019, India partially banned
imported Vietnamese incense sticks.
Narrator: Paired with younger generations leaving for other jobs,
Quang Phu Cau's incense industry struggled.
Wanting to keep the century-old tradition alive,
Thi got creative.
First, he designed the product
to better reflect Vietnamese tastes.
He cut the sticks longer, dyed them pink,
and added fragrance.
Then he added machines to speed up production.
The workers went from being able
to make 500 sticks a day by hand to 50,000 using machines.
Thi also launched a cooperative
with 12 other incense makers in the village.
Narrator: That way, he could recruit more workers outside his village.
Next, he set out to find new buyers inside Vietnam
to replace his lost business from India.
So Thi got his product registered
with the National Office of Intellectual Property.
Now his products are traceable with barcodes,
making it easier to find domestic wholesale buyers.
He's still not selling as many incense sticks
as he did to India.
Today, Thi sells about 80 tons domestically each year.
That's less than a third of what he sold to India,
but he has ramped up production for Vietnamese customers.
Now his cooperative's factory is the largest in the village.
Narrator: Thi now has enough capacity to prepare
for his biggest event of the year, Tet.
Incense sticks are used in religious ceremonies
in temples year-round.
The line of incense smoke is said
to connect the spiritual world to this one.
Narrator: But come February 1,
during the Vietnamese Lunar New Year ...
Narrator: The factory runs all year, but in the lead up to Tet,
Thi earned 40% more in revenue,
and his team makes 200 more pounds of incense sticks daily.
He also makes yellow, brown, and red sticks,
as well as incense coils and cones.
Narrator: They spread the sweet aroma
of the Quang Phu Cau incense village across Vietnam.