Incense

There was this old temple, an old Chinese Buddhist temple. The wall and the pillars painted in red, the roof that looked like a book opened in half reverted painted in yellow, and many small painting and figurines in different colors, but mostly in green, and in the style of Chinese ink wash painting.

Smog formed from the incenses lighted by the people engulfed the temple and took over the color. The whole temple looked washed away, the paint peeled off from the wall and the ceiling of the temple made with thick round woods were covered in dark.

People came in with their incenses and light them from the box, where a thin line immersed in a pool of oil, leaving only a tip out and could be lighted for many hours. The incenses took only a few seconds to be ignited, and it will gradually burn to the ashes and the smoke it generated would be gone by then.

The incense was used as a kind of timing device back in the time, where people would light it up and do various kind of work in that time till it burned out.

The process of burning is slow, you could see it go from the top to the bottom in a leisure movement. Much like a smoke, it burned down to the end as if there were something eating it up.

Also, the smoke produced by the the incense is normally eye watering, if you got anywhere near it, it would feel like you are standing near a barbecue grill, right above it, to be precise.

But people still walk in and walk out like it was nothing, because their believe in the religion was so strong.