What is the "dark" candied haws? Take a look at China's "first string" of candied haws!

Winter is coming

The best season to eat candied haws has arrived!

The pace of the times is accelerating

Sugar-coated haws also undergo an "upgrade and iteration"

There are even pig's trotters, spicy strips, instant noodles, etc.

"Dark" Candied Haws...

Today, let's go back to the past and trace the original taste of candied haws - make the first string of candied haws in China. In order to maintain the attribute of "the first string" of candied haws, we need to find the earliest ingredients and utensils used to make candied haws in Chinese history. Come on, snap your fingers - let's go back to the time when Chinese ancestors lived.

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Borrow Hawthorn

The most authentic candied haws must be made with hawthorn. So, the first step is to find the earliest Chinese ancestors who ate hawthorn.

China is one of the origins of hawthorn. In the first Chinese dictionary "Er Ya Shi Mu" written between the Warring States Period and the Han Dynasty, there is a record of "hawthorn" (i.e. hawthorn) that looks like plum.

However, there is a pitfall here. The hawthorn in the Warring States period was not the earliest one. In the era without written records, there were earlier ancestors who ate hawthorn. About 7,500 to 9,000 years ago, in the Central Plains area where the Yellow River flows - now Wuyang, Henan, the "Jiahu people" were brewing alcoholic fermented beverages with rice, hawthorn and honey as raw materials - this is the result drawn by archaeologists after analyzing the pottery sediments at the Jiahu site many years later.

Hekou Red Pottery Jar Luohe Museum

This discovery not only reveals that the Jiahu people were the first group of people in the world to make wine, but also traces the history of Chinese ancestors eating hawthorn back to the Neolithic Age.

However, the climate in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River at that time was warm and humid, with dense vegetation, and there may have been wild animals such as crocodiles, rhinos, and Asian elephants. Therefore, in the process of searching for the residence of the Jiahu people, we must pay attention to safety.

In this way, we successfully borrowed the earliest hawthorns from the people of Jiahu.

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Borrow bamboo sticks

Now that we have hawthorns, we need to string them together using bamboo sticks. Where can we find bamboos?

China has a long history of using bamboo. For example, in ancient mythology, Hou Yi used bamboo arrows to shoot the sun, and Nu Wa made bamboo reeds. It can be said that bamboo is deeply rooted in the hearts of our ancestors. We don't need to cut bamboo or grind bamboo sticks. We can "cooperate" with our ancient ancestors and "borrow" from the Chinese ancestors who first used bamboo sticks.

A bamboo mat dating back 7,400 years ago was unearthed at the Gaomiao site in Huaihua, Hunan, which is the earliest bamboo handicraft known in China so far. However, we want to find bamboo sticks directly to save ourselves the trouble.

Good news! Archaeologists have excavated "bamboo sticks" at the Hemudu cultural site in Yuyao, Zhejiang. There are bamboo objects that are very similar to bamboo sticks in the collections of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum. This shows that about 7,000 years ago, there were large bamboo forests in the Yangtze River Basin, and the Neolithic ancestors there had already widely used bamboo objects in their lives. So let's borrow the ready-made bamboo sticks from the Hemudu people.

Bamboo mats unearthed from the Gaomiao site in Hongjiang

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Borrow sugar

The hawthorns and bamboo sticks were all “borrowed”, and the “gourd” was ready, but who could “borrow” the most important layer of crystal clear sugar coating in the candied haws? This “borrowing” could not be done once.

We must first "borrow" the raw material for making cane sugar - sugarcane . Throughout history, there has been much controversy about the origin of sugarcane. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the first record of sugar appeared in Chinese literature: Zhouyuan was juicy and sweet, and the violets were like sweet candy. However, since the word "sweet candy" was not clearly stated, and it was probably not sugarcane, we should not ask the Western Zhou people to borrow it without authorization.

In the Warring States Period, the clue of sugar cane finally appeared in Chuci - boiled turtle and roasted lamb, and some 柘浆. "柘" means sugar cane, and "柘浆" means the juice obtained from sugar cane, which reflects that the people in Chu during the Warring States Period were able to do primitive processing of sugar cane.

So, what we can "borrow" is the earliest sugarcane juice.

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How does sugarcane juice become sucrose?

In the process of making candied haws, there is a very pleasing step - boiling the white cane sugar into a sticky, transparent syrup with a slightly yellow hue, which will form a layer of shiny sugar coating after cooling and solidifying.

Cane sugar is hard to borrow, why? Isn't it enough to boil cane sugar with sugarcane juice? This step is quite difficult. Sugarcane juice contains molasses. If the cane sugar is not purified, the molasses boiled directly will hardly form a crispy sugar coating after cooling.

It seems that the earliest cane sugar can't be borrowed for the time being. It doesn't matter, snap your fingers again and "pass" a bag of white sugar over! Haha, it seems that the ingredients of the "first string" are flawed, so use it.

Knowledge link: There is a great debate in the academic community about when the sugarcane sugar making process appeared in my country. Mr. Ji Xianlin, through comprehensive research, believes that "the production of sugarcane in China began in a period between the Three Kingdoms, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Tang Dynasty, at least before the Later Wei Dynasty."

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Borrow a fire

After getting the white cane sugar, we can finally start the last step - boiling the sugar! Since this is China's "first string" of candied haws, we must use China's earliest fire.

There are more than 20 sites in my country where humans used fire. Among them, the Xihoudu site in Ruicheng County, Shanxi Province and the Yuanmou Man site in Yunnan Province are both from the Early Paleolithic period. Black substances were found in these two sites, which were tested to be carbonaceous.

Many scholars believe that this is the earliest evidence of human use of fire. But who came first, the Xihoudu people or the Yuanmou people? There is a clue. No human remains have been found at the Xihoudu site. Since we are looking for our ancestors to borrow fire, it would be bad if we can't find them. To be on the safe side, we chose a more reliable borrower: the Yuanmou people. Let's go and borrow a fire!

Now, we have gathered all the "antique" ingredients and utensils to make candied haws, and China's "first string" of candied haws is ready!

Imagine that when you taste this string of crystal clear, sweet and sour candied haws, you seem to be able to feel the joy of the Jiahu people in making wine, the dexterity of the Hemudu people in making bamboo sticks, the sweetness of the Chu people in the Warring States Period in squeezing sugarcane juice, and the wisdom of the Yuanmou people in using fire...

Author: Xiao Qing, former editor of Global Exploration magazine

Qu Qu is a member of the China Science Writers Association and the Jiangsu Science Writers Association.

Review expert: Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasty Associate Professor, Institute of History of Science and Cultural Heritage, University of Science and Technology Beijing

Deputy Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Culture

Editor: Dong Xiaoxian