Bi Wen Dan: The Meaning of “Avoid”

On the incense maker’s list, there was one blend I kept hesitating over: Bi Wen Dan.

Its name is difficult to translate neatly. Bi means to avoid, keep away from, or protect oneself from. Wen refers to epidemic illness or pestilence. In traditional texts, the formula was described as something to be burned during periods of seasonal disorder, in damp or long-unoccupied rooms, or whenever harmful influences were believed to be present in the air.

That description made me uneasy.

I had always thought of incense as something that first belongs to scent and sensation: something we smell, something that changes the atmosphere of a room, something that quietly alters how the body feels within a space.

Once an incense is introduced primarily through what it is supposed to do, I worry that its scent disappears behind the claim. Instead of being something to experience, it becomes something we are asked to believe in.

Bi Wen Dan was also described as a medicinal scent, and I felt resistant to that language too.

Later, I began to reconsider what “medicinal” actually meant.

Before plants became medicine, they were simply plants. Roots, leaves, bark, resins and peels existed long before people learned how to name their uses. Their aromas came first. Their medicinal value was something people discovered later.

So a medicinal scent is, before anything else, the scent of herbs and plant materials.

When I smelled Bi Wen Dan for myself, it was not as severe as the name suggested. A gentle citrus sweetness softened the bitter, dry edges of the herbs. As the scent entered the nose, the breath seemed to open slightly. There was a sense of movement through the body—clearer, less enclosed, as though the air had made a little more room for itself.

My conversation with the incense maker began with a simple question: why had he chosen to continue making this blend?

I asked him:

“Science and medicine have developed so much. Many things that people once understood as pestilence or harmful dampness now have clear methods of prevention—washing our hands, keeping spaces clean, maintaining good hygiene. When our time and materials are limited, why continue making an incense like this?”

He replied:

“No matter how much medicine and technology develop, the things that exist in the air have not disappeared. We can manage our personal habits, but that alone may not be enough. There is only so much control we have over the air around us.”

To him, Bi Wen Dan was first of all a carefully made incense using materials he considered suitable for everyday use. The formula came from knowledge and experience carried over a long period of time. He also believed that burning it could help keep unwanted influences at a distance.

Then he added something much simpler:

“And it smells good.”

I heard compassion in his answer, but also a way of understanding the relationship between people and their surroundings.

Chinese culture grew out of an agricultural civilisation. Farming has always required two seemingly opposite attitudes at once: following the seasons, while also working to alter the conditions around us.

We cannot command the weather. But we can prepare the soil.

We cannot stop the seasons from changing. But we can decide when to sow, when to shelter, and how to preserve what has been grown.

Again and again, people have tried to find a balance between adapting to the world and reshaping a small part of it.

Perhaps Bi Wen Dan belongs to that same instinct.

The incense maker then explained the word bi more carefully.

“The purpose of Bi Wen Dan is not to destroy what is harmful,” he said. “It is to avoid it, or to encourage it to move elsewhere.”

“What people once called harmful spirits may simply have been other forms of life following their own nature. The intention of this incense was never total destruction. It was closer to coexistence.”

He paused, then said:

“My understanding of coexistence is this: I recognise that you exist, but I also hope you will not harm me.”

That distinction stayed with me.

To avoid is not the same as to eliminate.

Elimination begins with the belief that everything unwanted must disappear. Avoidance begins by recognising that the world contains things we cannot fully control, and that not everything outside our boundaries is an enemy.

But recognition does not require surrender.

We can acknowledge the existence of something while still creating distance from it. We can allow the world to remain complex while protecting a small space in which we can live.

I eventually realised that my resistance had never really been directed at Bi Wen Dan itself.

I was resisting the moment when an incense is explained too quickly through efficacy—when the promise of what it might accomplish becomes louder than the scent itself.

I still believe incense should first be something that can be smelled, not something that must be believed.

But resistance can also obscure what is already there.

My hesitation over this blend led to a conversation that changed how I understand the word avoid.

Avoidance is often mistaken for weakness, passivity or escape. Yet sometimes it is a more mature response than eradication. It accepts that certain things exist, and that human beings cannot fully master the air, the environment, other forms of life, or even their own fate.

Still, within the room where I live, I hope for a little clarity.

A little openness in the breath.

A little space that does not feel invaded.

Perhaps that is what Bi Wen Dan offers me—not certainty, and not a promise of protection, but an older and quieter attitude toward living in an uncontrollable world:

to recognise what exists,
to preserve an appropriate distance,
and to make the air around us feel a little more inhabitable.