Every day, we make sugar melons.
They’re not filled. They’re hollow inside.
We can also make them long.
You can’t just bite into them.
You need to break a piece into bits to eat it.
It’s crispy and sweet.
I’m Chen Dianqi.
I’m 70 years old.
I have been making this candy for 48 years.
Folks in Chenlou village have been making sugar melons
for over 100 years.
Chen runs one of this town’s last five candy factories.
You usually give sugar melons to friends and relatives.
My sugar melon-making skills came from my ancestors.
It can only be made in Chenlou.
We can only make it in winter,
from around November to Chinese New Year.
It melts easily in summer, not in winter.
We start boiling the candy at 3 a.m.
There are 9 people working in this factory.
If 1 person doesn’t turn up, we can’t make it.
Making sugar melon is tiring.
We can’t sleep, we really can't.
Sugar melon is made with millet and malt.
The (malt powder) releases sugar from the millet,
and produces sugar water.
After the moisture evaporates, we are left with syrup.
This process takes about 4 hours.
The team takes turns to stir it with wooden planks all night long.
They start to pull the block of maltose when it feels dry enough.
We pull until all the candy strands are evenly thick.
This step is crucial.
If the strands aren’t even,
when we make them into a melon, it will look asymmetrical.
One side will be thicker than the other.
We fold the strands to form a tube,
So that it’s hollow inside.
They let the candy strips quickly cool outside
in the cold weather before shaping them into melons.
We use a rope to cut it into pieces.
The melons stay in shape in the cold.
Since they’re handmade, not machine-made, their sizes vary.
You can make a sugar melon as big as you want.
It just takes longer to cool down.
After the candy cools for half an hour, we coat it with sesame. Then it’s done.
Then it’s done.
We make 75 kg (165 pounds) of candy every day, all handmade.
We sell them at $3 per kg (2.2 pounds).
We sell them to distributors.
They sell the candy online.
I learned this when I was young.
My dad taught me.
I farm when I don’t make candy.
When I’m done harvesting in winter,
I start making sugar melons.
I like making this because it keeps me warm in winter.
My son knows how to make them too
but he doesn’t want to do this.
He’d rather work outside the village.
Now that he works elsewhere,
he makes about $30 dollars a day all year round.
He thinks you can’t earn much making candy because you only do it for a short while each year.
do it for a short while each year.
When I’m too old to do this,
my plan is to teach people in their 50s and 60s.
As long as I can pass this skill onto someone younger than me,
we won’t lose this craft.