Sweet sweat of making sugar
2004-03-16 China Daily
Although he is soaked in sweat, Zeng Jurong cannot stop stirring the liquid
in the big cauldron. It is 9 o'clock in the morning, but Zeng has already been
at work for seven hours. He will be busy the whole day, to complete his job only
when he has extracted the juice from 5,000 kilograms of sugar cane and made it
into 500 kilograms of unrefined brown sugar.
Zeng, 22, is just one of the 100 peasants of the village of Yaomi, in
Chunjiang Township in Jinyang County, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, who
have been taking turns doing the same work right through the Spring Festival
holiday. Planting sugar cane has been an important part of the livelihood of the
local farmers for over 200 years.
"We rely on sugar cane to supplement our incomes," says Liu Dayuan, the
village head, in his 50s, who has just finished his stint at making sugar.
The village now has about 7 hectares of sugar cane fields, divided among the
44 households of the village, which is able to produce 500,000 kilograms of
sugar cane every year.
Hard work
It is a busy time for the villagers when the sugar making season rolls
around. The roaring diesel-powered extractor breaks the tranquility of the small
village one month before the Spring Festival and the work usually goes on for
about two months.
The villagers have four specially built sheds for making sugar. They draw
lots to establish their time to use the sheds.
Sugar making requires teamwork, so the villagers all help one another.
"Thirty people helped me cut the cane yesterday," said Zeng Jurong.
"Today I have 18 helpers, in addition to two skilled technicians," said the
young man.
In the shed he is using there is a square collecting pool made of bricks and
eight big cauldrons in a row, all of which are connected with plastic pipes. The
sugar cane juice flows from the extractor into the brick-lined pool. After being
allowed to settle for a while, the juice is channeled into the first cauldron
for boiling. At a lower level than the big boiling cauldron, the other seven
cauldrons, lined up in a row, are used in the distillation process leading to
the final step - packaging the completed rounds of brown sugar. The first four
cauldrons are all 1.66 metres in diameter, and the other three are smaller -
about 90 centimetres in diameter.
Two men operate the diesel-powered extractor and two men tend the fire. Three
women collect the sugar cane from which the juice has been extracted. They leave
enough cane for fuel in the shed and carry the left-over canes back home to use
for cooking.
The contents of each of the cauldrons are different in colour. The juice in
the first one is thin, and contains a lot of impurities. Zeng Jurong, with a
wooden dipper, removes the impurities putting them in a barrel. "This is used to
feed our pigs," says Zeng.
Yao Yongqiang, one of the two skilled technicians, is responsible for boiling
the sugar. "It's not easy to control the temperature," said Yao, who has been
doing the work for more than 15 years. "You must know precisely the right time
for every stage of the process: for instance, when to put the cooking oil into
the cauldron," he said.
Standing beside the last three cauldrons was Zeng Fangpin, the other
technician.
"I learned the process when I was only 12," said Zeng, 55, who is the
village's "sugar master." With an apron around his waist, Zeng, holding a
spatula in his left hand and a wooden dipper in his right, keeps filling the
small bowls on the table with the golden syrup. "See, I can pour them exactly to
weight," he said proudly.
But Zeng said that making sugar was really a hard job. "My waist and wrists
usually ache after a day's work," he said.
Beside the table several men were busy taking the solidified rounds of sugar
from the containers and wrapping them in stacks of 10 with dry sugar cane
leaves.
"Each package weights 0.9 kilograms," said Zeng Jurong. "It's a handy size
for marketing," said Zeng, who expects to make 500 kilograms of sugar this time.
Sales declining
Yaomi Village brown sugar is well known for its quality in the surrounding
communities. It used to sell well in the late 1970s and the 1990s. But sales
have been falling off perhaps because more and more people are cutting sugar
from their diet for health reasons.
"I still remember the day when we bought the first diesel-powered extractor,"
said Liu Dayuan. The machine cost us 8,000 yuan (US$965), half of which was paid
by the villagers, and the other half was paid with a loan from the township
government. The new machine replaced their old, less efficient millstones
"We paid off the loan the next year," said Liu, adding that this was because
the brown sugar was selling well at that time.
"In 1996 and 1997 one kilo of sugar sold for three yuan (36 US cents)," Liu
recalled.
"It seems that people no longer like brown sugar," Liu said. He said that he
produced 1,251 kilograms this year. Usually one kilo sells for 2 yuan (24 US
cents). Now he has to trek 8 kilometres through the mountains to the Chunjiang
township seat to sell his sugar. "I think it will take me the whole year to sell
it all," said Liu, pointing at the piled-up packages of sugar. Before the rain
season he will have to put them in plastic bags.
Because of the poor roads, the farmers can market their sugar only as far as
the town seat.
"Fortunately, we don't need to worry about our staple diet," Liu said.
In 1998, the Chinese Government decided to turn cultivated lands bordering
major rivers and lakes back into forest for environmental protection, and Yaomi
Village, which is beside the Jinsha River, now gets a grain subsidy from the
government.
The compensation plan provides them with 81.6 kilograms of rice and 21
kilograms of flour for every mu (15 mu equals one hectare) of cultivated land
returned to forest.
"I get 1,060 kilos of rice and 273 kilos of flour every year," said Liu, who
had 13.2 mu farmland by the river.
"We have more than enough to fill our stomachs. But we still need money for
other necessities," said Liu. "Planting sugar cane and making sugar has long
been our way out," he said.
The farmers are considering another way to make money - raising silkworms.
"However, it takes time for the villagers to change their traditional way of
living," Liu said.
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