Back Heritage » Vietnam » [Photos] Making Sugar at an Early 20th-Century Boiling House in Quang Ngai

Unlike cash crops such as rubber or coffee that were brought in from other parts of the world, sugarcane was among Vietnam’s original native trees, and locals have been growing the sweet plant for centuries, ever since we learnt about agriculture.

Today, apart from being a common feature of rural home gardens, sugarcane is the centerpiece of a major industry in Vietnam. Across the central belly of the country, fields of towering cane stretch towards the horizon, from Khanh Hoa to Phu Yen to Quang Nam. The plump stalks are now ferried to processing plants to be transformed into refined sugar, but there was a time before automatons when every step of the sugar-making process was accomplished with manual labor by humans, and even water buffaloes.

These black-and-white shots, taken in Quang Ngai, from the photo book An Nam 1919 – L’Indochine française, are among the earliest visual records of boiling houses in Vietnam. Under colonial French rule, it was likely that the sugar boilers and farmers worked under poor conditions. Still, the trade endured and became a lucrative craft for locals at least until the 1980s, when large-scale production started replacing family-owned boiling houses.

Nguyễn Thị Lệ, who was 75 at the time of a 2013 interview with Thanh Nien, spoke fondly of her childhood, when her father’s sugar boiling business was booming. The family's home is based in Bao An Village of Quang Nam Province, an area well-known for its sugar production. Lệ explained that all sugar-making families must have a giant “juicer” and rear a few water buffaloes to run the juicing. Two wooden blocks, carved with a zigzag pattern, formed a center. The sugarcane stalks were wedged in between the blocks while the buffaloes, attached to the juicing core by a bamboo stick, walked in a circle around it.

The sugarcane juice was then boiled into a syrup, and any impurities were removed. Lastly, the syrup was poured into molds and left to dry. The resulting blocks of crystallized sugar were carted off to the local markets.

Lệ’s family continued boiling sugar at least until 1986, but after older artisans died, few descendants wanted to take up the withering trade. Other households in the village shared the same fate.

[Photos via Redsvn]

Related Articles

in Vietnam

[Photos] Rare Photos of Hue From a Vintage French Publication in 1919

Hue is a city of empires, dynasties, armies, conquest and rule.

in Vietnam

My Great-Great-Grandfathers Were in Indochina in the 1880s to Build the Railway

We often see archival images of old Hanoi, but these photos are different — they are personal. The following shots, which come from a collection of five photo albums, are the only surviving record of ...

in Vietnam

There's a Dark Context Behind These Seemingly Random 1930 French Sketches

Can visual representations of colonial activities produced with immoral intent become works of art?

in Vietnam

[Photos] Cruising Across Vietnam on the North-South Train in 1920

It appears train travel in Vietnam has changed very little in the past 100 years.

in Vietnam

[Photos] Inside the Back-Breaking Mining Operations of Bac Kan Under French Rule

Bac Kan Province in northern Vietnam is the country’s least-populous locality, with just over 300,000 people, but it has an abundance of metal veins, the mining of which dominates the local economy.

in Saigon

A Brief History of District 1's Collège d’Adran, Saigon's Oldest School

Driving past the Saigon Zoological and Botanical Garden toward Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh Street, many of us might not notice the presence of Võ Trường Toản Secondary School and Trưng Vương High School. The two ...

Partner Content