In the past, sugarcane was the most effective crop to reduce hunger and poverty in Quang Ngai . I spent my childhood filled with the scent of sugarcane and the cheerful nursery rhymes throughout the moonlit season. Then, when the dry rays of sunlight announced the season, when “the sweet sugarcane gradually reached the top”, my heart sank with many emotions. Due to the weather and soil characteristics of the Central Coast region, it is usually the sixth lunar month that my hometown reaches the sugarcane harvest season. At this time, all over the fields, slopes, and sugarcane fields have begun to dry and crack, the leaves have turned silver, rustling in the wind. In the vast deserted space, mixed with the fragrance of the grass and flowers along the shore is the sweetness of sugarcane sugar wafting from the hands of the cowherds.
It is not clear when sugarcane was planted in my hometown, but I only know that in the book "Dai Nam Thuc Luc" compiled by the National History Institute of the Nguyen Dynasty, it shows that sugarcane planting and sugar making were very prosperous since the time of the first kings of the Nguyen Dynasty. At that time, the court set a rule to buy sugar in large quantities every year, some years more than a hundred thousand kilograms, for the court to use and export. Especially when the Ming Huong people (from China) from Co Luy came to settle, forming Thu Xa city, trading in many things, including sugar and mirror candy. Also here, in the old documents that are still preserved, the indigenous people opened a sugar processing factory. Sugar was extracted to produce refined sugar products, creating specialties that we still hear about today such as: rock sugar, lung sugar, mirror candy... These types of sugar were sold, while the molasses was considered a by-product used only as a binding material, called "three compounds" (including lime, sand, molasses) to build walls and columns when there was no cement.
Sugarcane is an industrial crop with high economic value, so at one time, the sugarcane industry in my hometown was very developed. There were up to 2 sugar factories built, operating effectively, creating jobs for hundreds of workers. Since then, the area of land for sugarcane cultivation has been expanded. Manual and spontaneous sugar processing is no longer active. When harvest season comes, instead of carrying bundles or using ox carts to bring them home, now we just need to pile them up on the bank, and the sugarcane company's trucks will come to collect them.
One day, visiting a village acquaintance, I was surprised by the old space still existing in the corner of the garden: a rotten thatched hut, a set of rotating presses, a large pot and a clay stove that had eroded, leaving only the bamboo skeleton. I looked closely, recalling the bustling scene of pressing sugarcane to extract molasses and make sugar. I thought of the buffaloes chewing grass while pulling the goods around the fixed crane. I remembered the spoonfuls of brown sugar, the final result, and could not forget the smiles of the uncles and aunts when the sugar yield was higher than expected.
There is a type of sweet, sticky sugar from sugarcane that anyone born and raised in a sugarcane-growing area will certainly know, that is young sugar. The sugarcane juice is pressed and put into a large pot to boil, people can add lime powder. When it boils, skim off the dirty foam, ladle it into another pot to let the residue settle, then continue cooking. Young sugar is the product obtained when the sugarcane juice has not been cooked to the point of crystallization, it is still sticky, fragrant, and viscous. From the careful and meticulous care in each step to create sugar, in my hometown there appear many meaningful folk songs: "Clear sugarcane juice also turns into sugar/I love you, I know, but ordinary habits do not know".
My hometown is known as the land of sugarcane, not at all exaggerating. But that was in the past, but now, the sugarcane industry has gradually faded away. 5 years ago, 1 of the 2 famous sugar factories in the province stopped operating, the remaining factory is no longer as productive as in the "golden" days. Many officials and workers were transferred to work at An Khe Sugar Factory ( Gia Lai province). And of course, the sugarcane land has been restructured, cultivating other crops or perennial plants.
Once returning to my hometown, passing by a field and seeing an abandoned sugarcane watchtower, next to which were sugarcane bushes with withered leaves, I knew that the sugarcane industry was over. Where were the calls to each other to go out to the fields to trap sugarcane birds; where were the convoys of trucks carrying sugarcane back to the factory; where was the sweet, lingering, passionate taste of young sugar? I felt my heart heavy with worries, suddenly echoing somewhere a familiar poem: “Remembering my homeland of green mulberry, sweet sugarcane/The fragrant afternoon sugar shimmers with golden silk” (Te Hanh).
Source: https://baogialai.com.vn/mot-thoi-huong-mia-post328312.html
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