[Sca-cooks] Re: Blown Sugar is Chinese Apparently

[Terry Decker]

Sugar cane was being grown in the Indus Valley and basic extraction was 
being performed by about 500 BCE.  Sugar and sugar refining were being 
practiced in Mesopotamia by around 500 CE having been imported from India by 
the Persians.  I see no particular problem to the Chinese having refined 
sugar before the Islamic expansion as the Arabs got sugar refining and sugar 
cane from the Persians around 640 CE.

There is a train of thought that sugar cane originated in Polynesia and was 
brought into southeast Asia where it radiated out into India and China.  If 
this were the case, then I would think that the 200 BCE date for the 
introduction of sugar cane into China as being rather late.

Bear


> Greetings!  I've been skimming the digests because I've been substitute
> teaching for two weeks and it's using up what energy I have.  However, I
> had a question today about this Chinese business... When was sugar cane
> developed and grown in China?  When did they have whatever passed for
> refineries?  You can't make blown sugar without having some type of sugar
> production and I will admit that I know virtually nothing about China.  I
> know that the Arabic sugar production from cane supposedly started around
> the time of Mohammed.  Did the Chinese have "processed" cane sugar prior 
> to
> the Arabs?
>
> Alys Katharine