Hong Kong took its name ‘fragrant harbor’ from the incense trees that grow here. The trees are now almost gone because of human predators. Dara Wang reports on the efforts to save the trees that remain.

Ho Pui-han inspects a wild incense tree in a deep mountain in 2015. The resinous wood can be used in incense, perfume and carvings. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

In a summer afternoon of 2015, Ho Pui-han snapped a picture of two poachers as they were just getting into a car and ready to leave an Aquilaria sinensis forest. Left with no time to put away her phone, she saw the vehicle, 200 meters away, hurtling toward her.  

“My whole body was trembling,” she recalled. 

Luckily, a mini-bus driving ahead of the car stopped beside her. Ho jumped onto it, making a narrow escape. 

I’ve spent even more time with trees than with people in recent years. Incense trees are my close friends

Ho Pui-han, an environmental enthusiast who engages herself in protecting wild incense trees

The Aquilaria sinensis is an evergreen medicinal tree used in making incense that grows in the lowlands of southern China and other subtropical regions. Its product, fragment wood, is worth up to HK$60,000 (US$7,738) per gram. Like other precious commodities worldwide, it attracts poachers.

Opulent potential profits from the Aquilaria sinensis and poorly written laws have brought poachers like a plague — poachers prepared to take the lives of others to protect their ill-gotten gains. They also pose a threat to the very existence of the endangered trees. Ho is undeterred. She carries on with her efforts to protect the trees even though she may be putting her life at risk.

Ho recalled encountering the two poachers one afternoon, while patrolling the incense tree forest around Hok Tau village, 10 kilometers from the boundary between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Two strange people caught her attention. “They took photos of almost every tree they passed and followed tracks where there were no paths at all,” she said.  

Ho Pui-han’s volunteer team conducts field research in collaboration with the police and the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department in 2016. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Ho followed them to the parking lot. When the two got into a car, Ho used her phone and took a photo. Then came the potentially deadly encounter.

On the next day, Ho handed the photo to the police. The police could do little. At the time, the police had listed incense tree poaching as a normal incident of illegal tree felling. More than a dozen of incense trees were lost in the next week. Now, there are only two left in the neighborhood.

The trees are now endangered. In Hong Kong, the numbers of Aquilaria sinensis are down to within 1,000, according to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. To Ho, the losses cannot be quantified. They are precious and irreplaceable.

The heady fragrance of agarwood gave Hong Kong its name, which means fragrant harbor in Chinese. Ho believes Hong Kong residents can find their cultural roots in those trees.

According to Lo Hsiang-lin, a renowned researcher in Hakka culture, as early as the Song Dynasty (960-1279), incense trees were widely planted at Sha Lo Wan and on Hong Kong’s Lantau island. Farmers transported the tree products from inland to Shek Pai Wan, where they were exported to Southeast Asia and further to Arabia. Shek Pai Wan was known as the “port of Hong Kong” ­— the port used for transporting incense in Cantonese, and “Hong Kong” later became the name of the entire city.

Ho Pui-han (right) and then-acting Kwun Tong district commander Alice Lee Nga-lai inspect an incense tree in 2016. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Savior of the incense tree

The dangerous encounter did not deter Ho. She pressed on with her campaign and demanded that the government do more to protect the trees.

By late 2015, Ho was listed as the principal complainant on the Legislative Council, as she urged government departments with environmental mandates and the police to enhance monitoring and protection of the incense tree. She submitted her data and materials about the habitats, their locations and poaching scenes to the legislature and asked for clearly stipulated responsibilities among governmental departments.

Responding to Ho and the request of lawmakers, the government stipulated in mid-2016 that the police would conduct criminal investigations into all suspected cases on incense trees. Offenders involved in the illegal felling of the trees would be prosecuted mainly under the Theft Ordinance, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.

The government also worked with Ho, implementing the trial use of metallic tree guards, which are set to provide a secure barrier against felling or vandalism. By February, more than 140 incense trees in Hong Kong had been provided the barrier protection.

The barrier idea was raised by Ho in mid-2016. She found sponsors, who assisted in the production of iron bars, numbering 200 to 300 bars for each tree. They cost around HK$10,000 per tree. She created a team of volunteers to carry the bars to the deep mountains. Without any professional aid, it took more than eight hours for Ho and her volunteers to install the barriers for each tree. Ho installed barriers for eight trees. The entire project took her eight months.

In the June response, another significant development came when police added guarding of the incense trees as one of their duties. This may be due in part to Ho’s persistence.

Police officers in Tseung Kwan O are old friends of Ho. Every time Ho reported an illegal felling, she stayed at the scene until the police came. 

In 2015, a village in Tseung Kwan O lost a dozen incense trees. As usual, Ho and another volunteer went to the scene and called the police. They waited until dark but no police officer showed up. The volunteer told Ho she was going home for supper and then left. Ho, stayed, alone, in the deep mountain forest till late at night, until the police arrived. 

A member of Ho Pui-han’s voluntary team erects iron barriers for an incense tree in 2016. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Ho’s efforts drew the attention of then-acting Kwun Tong district commander Alice Lee Nga-lai (Tseung Kwan O was under the Kwun Tong District police division). She invited Ho to hold lectures, introducing her knowledge of the incense trees and their special values.

Lee learned through Ho’s guidance that all species of Aquilaria produce a dark aromatic resin. The resin protects a wounded tree from fungal infection. Sections of tree trunks or branches that contain patches of fragrant, resinous wood enter into the trade under the name “agarwood”. Also, the resin accumulated from the wood is used as a substitute for a valuable Chinese medicine called “Chen Xiang”, which once derived primarily from the species Aquilaria malaccensis and imported from the Asian tropics.

Deep gashes were often found at the base of trees by poachers, Ho mentioned, as a test to see if the tree is worth felling. “They will come back in a month to check if resin appears. If it does, they will just chop the tree down and carry it across the border,” she said.

Ho’s solution was to remove the resin appearing on the surface and apply a wound dressing onto the new gash to prevent the tree from producing resin. “It is like a race,” she said. “Poachers don’t want the tree to die immediately otherwise there will be no resin so both the poachers and I pray to be the first to find resin and take it away.”

Yet Ho’s efforts are not always successful. Some poachers take away the entire tree root, leaving Ho with no chance. Roots are used to make root carvings, which could be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. When it comes to protecting trees, barriers work best.

The effects are obvious. Enhanced protection at the governmental level has led to a sharp drop in the total weight of trees felled. 

From 2011 to 2019, nearly 1,000 kilograms of wood were known to have been poached, according to police statistics.

The Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department detected eight cases of agarwood smuggling from the city to the Chinese mainland between 2011 and 2015. A total of 800 kilograms of agarwood were seized. From 2015 to 2019, only 22 kilograms of agarwood were intercepted by customs officers. 

The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department implements the trial use of metallic tree guards in 2017. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Dearest friend

Ho said she never expected the incense tree to be such a passion for her.

She started her career in environmental protection after a serious illness. She had worked as a Chinese teacher at a middle school after graduating from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and traveled to Nepal at the age of 29. When she returned to Hong Kong, she had lost her appetite,  and her weight fell to only 70 pounds (31.75 kilograms) after several months. “Body checks showed that everything was okay, but I felt I was almost dead.”

Ho quit her teaching job and went to Lantau island, hoping the clean air there could heal her. During her vacation in 1999, she, along with several other environmental enthusiasts, formed the Association of Tai O Environment and Development, focusing on environmental concerns and protesting civil development.

One day in 2011, two monks approached her. They told Ho the pillaging of the incense trees by poachers. Out of curiosity, Ho started to research the trees. 

Ho learned that the incense tree is one of the top ingredients used in the Chinese incense culture. The fragrance cannot be artificially copied. The tree is a native species particularly abundant in mature woodlands next to the rural villages in Hong Kong.

Ancient villagers always plant the tree near cemeteries, in the belief that the tree can protect the family and ensure fortunes are passed to the next generations. 

With her growing knowledge of how deeply the tree is tied to Chinese tradition, Ho’s bond with the Aquilaria grew even stronger.

At Ho’s house, there are many pictures of incense trees being felled. They were printed on A3 size photo papers and sealed plastic. It takes Ho a while to think of the year she went to the university, while she only needs a second to recall where and when she found each of the felled trees. “I’ve spent even more time with trees than with people in recent years. Incense trees are my close friends.”

The hardiest time for her was not when being hit nearly by the car, but when visiting a root carving museum in the city of Dongguan in Guangdong province. 

Several of carvings made from the roots of incense trees are exhibited there. The sense of cruelty involved in these creations suffocates Ho. “To me, it was a horrible place with the ‘dead bodies of my dearest friends’,” said Ho, who took a deep breath. “But I have to learn about the market. That’s my job.”

Poaching is not as rampant as it used to be, but Ho still can’t settle her nerves. Ho and the government installed thermal imaging cameras next to incense trees. Once any creature passes by, the camera records it and sends the photo to devices, including Ho’s mobile. Ho opened the album of those photos. It is full of thermal images of creatures, such as birds or insects, hastening past the camera. Throughout the entire album, there’s not a single picture of a human.

Ho also keeps checking the livestream of the surrounding environment in case someone covers the camera. Several times, there was signal loss, which she reported to the police. All instances were found to be malfunctions.

The fact that the number of poaching has been greatly reduced does not draw a close to Ho’s job. As the majority of people have not realized the deep bond between the tree and local culture, Ho is shifting her focus to raising public awareness.

“One day, if the last wild incense tree on the earth dies, people in Hong Kong will lose not only a species but also a natural representative of their culture,” she said.

Ho said she would not miss a chance to publicize stories about the trees, as she believes it’s better to “bombard” people with regular news on the trees than to see headlines about the extinction shock people who’ll find it too late to regret.

Contact the writer at dara@chinadailyhk.com