Sugar

Tang IMG:p541_3.png:Chinese characters Saccharuvi ofjicinarum, divided into red-cane var. rubric a ule, used for chewing, and var. sinense, which is much more widely cultivated for crushing. The former grows to a height of eight feet; the latter to ten or as much as fifteen feet. The principal sugar growing districts are Kuangtung, Fukien, and Ssuch'uan, also Kiangsi, Hunan and Chekiang. Besides its ordinary uses, sugar is clarified and crystallised as H IMG:p541_4.png:Chinese characters etc.; made into figures for feasts; prepared with milk as IMG:p541_5.png:Chinese characters and barley sugar is made, IMG:p541_6.png:Chinese characters. Sugar cane is a very popular article of diet, and is esteemed for its tni ic and stomachic properties. Culti cation.— The land is planted once a year, during the first, second or third months, the cane maturing in about ten months. Each mow of land (l/6th acre) is planted with 1,100 or 1,200 bunches of cane in rows about one foot apart, each bunch consisting of five to nine stalks of cane. If planted 542 too closely together the sun does not penetrate sufficiently and the cane suffers. In the first year the crop is raised from cuttings which are steepeid in water for three days and then covered over with sand or straw and watered once a day. In the second and third years the crop is grown from the old roots, which are allowed to remain, banked up with mud, afteothe cane is cut. In the fourth year the roots are stubbed up and the land is planted with some other crop. The fertiliser almost exclusively used is bean cake (from Manchuria), the cost of which is about Tls. 7 per mow for good level ground, but Tls. 9 for poor and hilly land. Each mow will produce about 700 catties of sugar, about 55 bunches of stalks being required to produce 100 catties (one picul) of juice. Sugar "candy" is obtained from white sugar by purifying under a boiling heat with water, a little lime, and white of egg. It is then poured into round wide open-mouthed jars with slips of bamboo bent about inside, and allowed to cool. In cooling the sugar crystallizes in large lumps of candy over the slips and the jars are then overturnrsd' to drain off the water. The lumps are chipped with a knife into flat pieces and bleached in the sun. on bamboo trays, for two or three days. It is then colourle and like rock crystal. This candy was at one time exported to Bombay. Its chief centre of manufacture is Changchow, near Amoy, where the water is said to po e some chemical qualiity which favoiu-s its IMG:p542_1.png:Chinese characters The juice is expre ed from the cane between two granite or hardwood rollers placed vertically, through which the cane is drawn by cogwheels turned by bullocks. A stone basin beneath receives the juice which, without any attempt at clarification, is afterwards boiled in open iron pans; the fires are fed with cane refuse. While boiling the juice is constantly stirred and all dirt removed as it comes to the surface. The boiled juice is tihen poured into earthenware jars with a small plugged hole in the bottom of each, and when ilie jars are about 8/lOths full, the top is carefully closed over with earth and i the plug from the bottom is removed. The jars are then placed in the open air, where they remain for from 30 to 40 days according to the weather, until the IMG:p542_2.png:Chinese characters are quite dry. The sugar so obtained is sorted into three grades: the first, or uppermost in the jar being white, the middle green, and the lowermost brown sugar. The drippings which are merely left in the sun to dry gite the black sugar. In 1867 only about 90,000 piculs of all sorts (white, brown, and candy), were exported from China, the value being under half a million taels. The imports were just double this figure, and, in short, the trade was almost too small for notice; China supplied herself almost entirely. It was shortly after this that development began, and in the years 1871-1875 the annual average exportation was half-a-million piculs. South Formosa being the chief contributor. In 1876, IMG:p542_3.png:Chinese characters piculs were exported, but Chinese sugar had to compete against sugars produced in the Philippines and Java, and also those refined in Hong kong; and the trade, which reached its high-water mark in 1884 (over li-million piculs) soon began to decline. There was no proce of selection of cane; the plantations were in small lots, the methods of extraction were so poor as to waste 40% of the material (Amoy Customs Trade Report, 1877), and there was no co-ordination among planters nor any Government a istance. Even the small island of Barb a does exported 60% more sugar than the extensive fields of Formosa, where good machinery and roads were unknown. The large exports of 1883-84 were due to the failure of the beet crops in Europe, and after their recovery Chinese sugar declined rapidly, especially that produced on the mainland (as opposed to Formosa), as shown by the following figures: — 1887 1897 1907 Piculs 766,000 620,000 111,000 At the same time sugar imports increased at an extraordinary rate: — IMG:t542_1.png:Table (image of the original) The sugar imported into China comes from Hong kong, where there are two large refineries, from the Dutch Indies, and from Formosa, where, since the Japanese obtained po e ion of the island, the industry has received great encouragement from the Government, forming an object le on to the Chinese as to what might be done with their own industry. In Fukien several modern mills have been erected in the last few years, but foreign competition is very difficult to meet, though the Chinese claim that native sugar is intrinsically sweeter. Sugar produced from beet is being experimented with in Manchuria, where both the Ru ians and Japanese have started th£ industry, the soil being very suitable for beet growing. [N.S.]