Tenzin Chodzha’s Incense: From Learning Ingredients to Teaching Others

Tenzin Chodzha’s path into incense making began at eleven in Nyemo. A May 2026 Tibet Daily profile traces the work he learned from his family: recognising ingredients, kneading incense paste, understanding mixtures and mastering successive operations. The skill lay in judging materials and carrying a process through, not in a recipe alone.

Nyemo’s Thonpa area is associated with a long-established incense tradition. For a young learner, that tradition took the practical form of repeated tasks under experienced hands. An ingredient had to be recognised before it could be prepared; a mixture had to be workable before it could become a finished stick.

In 2005, Tenzin Chodzha established a workshop in Lhasa. His later work connected this city market with production in Nyemo. Reports describe a growing range of products, including incense, sachets and portable forms, together with changes in packaging and online sales.

These choices changed how customers encountered the craft. A sachet carries fragrance differently from a burning stick, while a small packaged object travels differently from a workshop order. Product design became a way of bringing established knowledge into new settings. The maker’s work expanded from handling a material to deciding how that material would reach people.

The same profile records training and visits by students. Teaching takes a skill learned within a family into a wider circle, where a novice can begin with ingredients and basic handling before approaching more demanding judgements. The workshop becomes a place of transmission as well as production.

Tenzin Chodzha’s career follows several connected movements: from childhood learning to independent work, from Nyemo to a Lhasa market, and from making objects to teaching others. The continuity lies in the practical knowledge carried through those changes. Fragrance is the finished product’s most immediate quality, but the history behind it is one of materials, work and decisions.