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However, to export the heavy and bulky incense logs must have caused a lot of trouble and lead to high transport costs. Yet, to assume that incense wood milling developed directly out of this trade seems, perhaps, premature. The incense industry received a very serious blow during the first eight years of the reign of K’ang-hsi (1662-1669), when the Manchus, under the excuse of the expulsion of the pirates and the necessity of protecting the population against them, ordered the people to evacuate the coastal areas, and move inland to places more than 50 li from the coast, so as to suppress the revolt of the Ming remnants. This not only led to the death of many, but also adversely affected the cultivation of and trade in incense trees. The most prosperous incense producing area, Sha Lo Wan on Lantau and Lik Yuen (nowadays known as Sha Tin), were within the evacuation area. Kuang-tung hsin-yü summaries the effects of this evacuation on the industry, noting that,
there were very few people left after the evacuation, and less than one-tenth of the incense tree growers were left. Most serious of all, old trees had been cut down, and those which were left were only those ten to twenty years old.*
Those who survived this evacuation experienced another disaster in the reign of Yung-Chêng (1723-1735) when a magistrate, obsessed with a love for high grade incense, killed a number of incense growers." As a result, the remaining incense growers destroyed the rest of the trees and fled. Thus, the once prosperous incense tree cultivation industry was seriously harmed." However, Aquilaria sinensis is by no means rare in Hong Kong. Dunn and Tutcher stated that in 1912, in a one-acre plot of fungshui woodland on lower ground in Hong Kong, 31 out of the 125 trees examined were Aquilaria sinensis (then known as A. Grandiflora)." Today, incense trees can still commonly be seen in natural woodland on lower hill slopes and in fungshui woods behind villages." It seems likely that while trade in incense logs did not survive beyond the early eighteenth century, local milling of incense and manufacture of joss sticks for the local trade did. It was certainly a significant feature of local life in the nineteenth century.
Incense Wood Milling
After 1842, the trade in incense wood expanded. Hong Kong's famous deep harbour and geographically sheltered position suited trading vessels. Having become a member of the British Empire, Hong Kong became