Chenxiang
Chenxiang is the Chinese name for the resin of agarwood, and the same name is used in trade for a category of agarwood. That is the one point here that is documented: the word is older than the modern trade that uses it, it appears in the classical Chinese materia medica as a valued material, and it is in use as a trade term. What the trade usage selects out of the name — which material, which form, which quality — is not fixed by the name itself and has to be confirmed with the counterparty.
Spelling, language and market
The name is written in Chinese characters in Chinese usage, and in Latin script as Chenxiang in trade documentation that circulates in English. A romanised Chinese trade term carries an ambiguity that a Chinese-script one does not: the romanisation is a convention, and the reading of the characters behind it is settled while the romanisation is one rendering of them. Where the term appears in a contract, the characters are the safer form to fix, because a romanised form can be read aloud in more than one way.
Attested usage
The name appears in Chinese incense and wood trade, and in international documentation that borrows the Chinese term. In the Chinese market the categories of agarwood are long established and are described in the market's own terms; a buyer outside that market should treat those descriptions as local rather than as a specification. A trade document that uses the word for a material without further description has not yet said what it is offering.
Named examples and neighbouring spellings
The name is recorded in the cultural material as a term used for a category of agarwood, alongside the account of agarwood's place in Chinese practice and in incense. The nearest entries in this glossary are the wood-type and material names that a buyer is likely to meet in the same documents. Two ordinary documents would help: a Chinese-language description of the lot, and a record showing how the same lot is described on both sides of the trade.
Alternative meanings
Read as a name rather than as a term, the string is used for people and for places in Chinese, so a reader may take it as naming a person or a place. It is also the ordinary Chinese word for the resin itself, which is the older sense and the one the trade usage is built on. Which of the two a trade document intends cannot be settled from the romanised form.
What it does not prove
The name does not establish the species, the resin content, the oil yield, the age, the size or form of the material, or the country of origin. It establishes no grade, and it is not a protected designation. It does not establish which category the trade usage selects, and a romanised form of the name does not fix the characters behind it.
This entry gives the documented referent of the term and its place in Chinese usage. It does not establish the species, grading, composition, origin or quality of any material described with it, and it does not establish a universal mapping between the name and any grading system.
- Biodiversity and application prospects of fungal endophytes in the agarwood-producing genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops (Thymelaeaceae): a reviewStates that all members of the agarwood-producing genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops are placed in CITES Appendix II. Records 92 compounds identified in agarwood, of which terpenoids are 40.22%, and names eighteen fungal genera reported to promote agarwood formation. It does not establish the quality, yield or age of any material, and it is a review rather than a regulatory instrument.
- Agarwood: A reviewStates that CITES Appendix II covers all species of Aquilaria and Gyrinops, and reports fifteen Aquilaria species distributed across the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, from Pakistan and India through southern China into Southeast Asia. It does not establish the legal status of any individual shipment in any particular jurisdiction.
OudGuide editorial review · 2026-10-20
Reviewed against the cited sources for the general referent of the term, and checked for a question-specific answer. The precise attribution was checked against general trade usage rather than against a single market, and each entry states which parts are local rather than general.