Blowing Sugar - Amazingly Sweet Art

Blowing sugar is a traditional folk art in China that becomes more and more difficult to find in the city. The artists use a mouth blowing technique to create various kinds of figures out of molten sugar, like animals or flowers. First the artist forms a small tube that is closed on one end. Then he starts to blow into the open end of the tube to get the fudge-like mass of sugar into shape. For this to work, the temperature of the sugar is crucial. If too high, the figure will not be stable and will collapse. If too low, then you have a hard time to sculpt the sugar mass. It takes the adept artists only a few minutes to create such work of art and you will find them mostly on farmers' markets or at traditional festivals. The sweet artworks are especially popular with children, though nowadays they are mostly bought to admire them rather than to eat them. The price for one piece is about 10 Renminbi (1 Euro).