If you’ve ever visited a temple fair or been to a food or night market in China, then bets are you’ve probably seen sugar paintings being sold off to eager passersby. This Chinese sugar art is a traditional Chinese folk art with a long history dating back hundreds of years.
Sugar painting (糖画 tánghuà) was part of popular street culture back in the olden days. Although much less common nowadays, you’ll still find them at temple fairs during Chinese New Year, on sale in some parks, and on sale at a few shops in Beijing.
These edible “paintings” are made from boiling saccharose and maltose, and the first key thing to making these intricate shapes is to control the temperature properly. If the temperature is too high, the syrup will be too watery to shape; if the temperature is too low, the syrup will become hard and difficult to stretch. The hot sugar syrup is drizzled onto a marble slab in the desired pattern and then becomes solid as the temperature cools, which means that another key part of making a perfect sugar painting is speed!
Sugar painting should be done smoothly in one continuous stream, and there can’t be any breaks in the painting process. Sugar painters don’t use stencils, and instead rely on images they’ve memorized in their minds.
The most popular patterns are dragons, phoenixes and the 12 Chinese zodiac signs, however these folk artists are also able to paint all kinds of animals and flowers. The paintings can be completed in as short a time as one minute! As soon as the painting is finished, a bamboo skewer is pressed and attached to the syrup. Once the sugar painting cools, it will be removed from the marble slab using a spatula-like tool.
Sugar painting can be traced back to the Ming dynasty when people used syrup to cast statues of Buddha figures for religious rituals. In the Qing dynasty, this was gradually simplified and popularized, with peddlers creating various patterns that represent good luck and fortune rather than Buddha figures, and the treat soon became a popular sought-after snack for children.
In 2008, sugar painting was listed as one of China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage items. Although it is not so commonly seen on the street now, the artistry continues to be passed down from generation to generation, and for many Chinese people, these edible paintings carry sweet memories of our childhoods.
It’s no wonder why little kids today are still obsessed with stopping for a few minutes to linger in awe every time there’s a sugar painting stand nearby. My daughter is obsessed with them, and being the arts and crafts addict myself, learning how to sugar paint is pretty high on my to-do list.
But, finding someone who can teach you how to make everything from scratch and let you practice on their equipment might not be an easy task. That’s where Taobao comes in. You can find everything on there, even a kid-friendly pen that lets you sugar paint at home with very little effort for less than RMB 100.
Much like a 3D pen, this comes with sticks of hardened sugar that heat up and melt once they’re inserted into the cute carrot-shaped pen. It comes with stencils and a cooling rubber pad for kids to trace their favorite designs on. Like with the real street artists, these also cool relatively quickly and makes for a pretty fun afternoon activity at home and is definitely a hit at school fairs and house parties.
Images: Taobao, Canva
