About 30 km from the center of Hanoi, Quang Phu Cau village in Ong Hoa District has been supplying incense to northern Vietnam for over a hundred years and has expanded the market to neighboring countries including Malaysia, China and India. Making incense is a time-consuming process that requires human labor involved in every step, such as splitting the bamboo into splints, drying them, then inserting them into machines to form the sticks before transporting them to dry. In the East, incense is used mainly for means of communication between the living and the dead, often used on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar calendar and in great demand during the New Year period and other spiritual events.