Anxixiang: Benzoin in Chinese Materia Medica

Anxixiang (安息香, ānxīxiāng) is the Chinese materia medica name for benzoin resin, the aromatic gum harvested from trees of the genus Styrax, chiefly Styrax tonkinensis from the uplands of Laos and northern Vietnam. The name literally means “Parthian fragrance,” referencing Anxi (安息), the Chinese transliteration of Parthia, through which Persian and Central Asian traders relayed aromatics along the Silk Road before Tang-dynasty writers recorded the resin under this name in the seventh and eighth centuries CE. Anxixiang entered Chinese pharmacy as an imported material, first described in texts such as the Youyang Zazu and later formalized in Song-dynasty bencao compendia. It remains listed in the current Chinese Pharmacopoeia as Styrax tonkinensis resin, historically used in aromatic formulas intended to revive consciousness and move stagnant qi, most famously alongside storax in Suhexiang Wan.

The name: from Anxi to Anxixiang

The “Anxi” in anxixiang is not a place in China but a Chinese rendering of Parthia, the Iranian empire that controlled much of the overland trade between the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Tang-dynasty merchants, many of them Sogdian or Persian by origin, moved resins, spices and other aromatics eastward along these routes and through the maritime ports of the south. When a foreign-smelling gum arrived without a native Chinese name, it was common practice to label it after the region or people who supplied it, rather than after its true botanical origin. Anxixiang followed this pattern: the name records the trade route, not the tree. For the parallel history of the word “benzoin” itself, moving from Arabic lubān jāwī through Latin and Portuguese into “benjuí” and “benzoin,” see the word benzoin: from lubān jāwī to benjuí, benjamin and benzene.

What is anxixiang made from?

Modern Chinese pharmacology defines anxixiang as the resin of Styrax tonkinensis, tapped from wounded bark and collected as pale, almond-shaped tears or pressed blocks — the same material Western trade calls Siam benzoin. Historically, though, the identity of anxixiang was less fixed. Some scholars of Chinese materia medica argue that the resin described in the earliest Tang sources was closer to storax from Liquidambar orientalis, native to southwestern Turkey and reaching China overland through Persia, and that the name shifted toward Southeast Asian Styrax resin only after maritime trade with Sumatra and mainland Southeast Asia expanded from the Song dynasty onward. This kind of drift, where one name is carried from one aromatic resin to a botanically unrelated one as supply routes change, recurs throughout the history of benzoin; see Benzoin vs Styrax (Storax) for the equivalent confusion in European nomenclature.

Anxixiang in the Tang and Song materia medica

The ninth-century miscellany Youyang Zazu, compiled by Duan Chengshi, describes a tree from the Persian region whose bark, when cut, yields a fragrant gum burned to dispel foul odors — an early account matching the general profile of anxixiang. By the tenth century the resin had a formal entry in the Kaibao Bencao (973 CE), and it was carried forward into later compendia, including Li Shizhen’s Bencao Gangmu (1596), which records its sources, appearance and uses in some detail. These texts describe anxixiang as arriving by sea and overland trade rather than being collected domestically, consistent with its status as an imported aromatic throughout Chinese history. For the broader arc of benzoin’s movement between Southeast Asia, the Islamic world and Europe, see The History of Benzoin.

What does anxixiang do in traditional Chinese medicine?

Classical Chinese medical texts describe anxixiang as acrid and bitter in flavor, warm in nature, and associated with the heart and spleen channels. Traditional formulas used it for what is termed “opening the orifices” (开窍), a category of treatment historically applied to sudden loss of consciousness, and for moving qi and relieving pain in the chest and abdomen. It appears as an ingredient in long-standing compound formulas, most notably Suhexiang Wan (苏合香丸, “Storax Pill”), and in some versions of Angong Niuhuang Wan (安宫牛黄丸). These are described here as historical and pharmacopoeial facts, not as evidence of clinical efficacy; anxixiang’s documented use in Chinese medicine spans well over a thousand years, and it continues to be listed as a recognized medicinal material in the current Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Readers interested in how benzoin functioned across different traditional medical systems can compare this with European and South Asian practice in Benzoin in Traditional Medicine.

Anxixiang and suhexiang: two resins, one recurring confusion

Because anxixiang and suhexiang (苏合香, storax from Liquidambar orientalis) so often appear together in the same classical formulas, the two are frequently conflated by non-specialists, much as “benzoin” and “storax” are confused in Western sources. They are botanically unrelated resins from different plant families, sharing only a broadly balsamic, vanilla-like sweetness carried by related compounds such as benzoic acid and vanillin.

The last entry, fengxiangzhi, is a genuinely native Chinese resin, unrelated in trade history to the imported anxixiang and suhexiang, and it illustrates how easily three superficially similar balsamic resins can be tangled together in translation. For more on how storax and benzoin diverge chemically and historically, see the Storax (styrax balsam) entry.

How anxixiang reached Chinese apothecaries

Overland caravans through Central Asia carried the earliest aromatics associated with the Anxi name, but from the Song dynasty onward the dominant route was maritime. Ships moving between Sumatra, mainland Southeast Asia and southern Chinese ports such as Guangzhou and Quanzhou carried benzoin resin alongside pepper, camphor and other tropical goods, often through intermediary polities like Srivijaya and Champa. This maritime network is the same one that later fed the Siam benzoin trade toward Europe; see Laos and the Siam Benzoin Trade for its continuation into the Grasse perfume industry. China itself has never been a significant producer of Styrax tonkinensis or Styrax benzoin; anxixiang has been an imported material for its entire recorded history, sourced from tropical Southeast Asia rather than grown domestically.

Anxixiang today

Anxixiang remains an officially recognized entry in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, defined botanically as the resin of Styrax tonkinensis and still sourced from Laos and Vietnam through the same general trade geography described in Tang- and Song-dynasty texts, though now formalized through modern import channels rather than overland caravans. It continues to appear in classical compound formulas manufactured under pharmacopoeial standards, and it is chemically continuous with the benzoin resin traded internationally for incense and perfumery. Understanding anxixiang, then, means holding two things at once: a Chinese name rooted in Parthian trade geography, and a botanical identity that settled, over centuries, on the same Southeast Asian Styrax species prized by perfumers from Sumatra to Grasse.

• anxixiang
• chinese-medicine
• styrax-tonkinensis
• history
• storax