There are two cradles of sucrose in the world. One is ancient India, which can be known from the ancient book Vedas. Another place is ancient China. The earliest written materials can be found in "Evocation of Soul" written by the patriotic poet Qu Yuan (some people think it is Song Yu) at the end of the Warring States Period. There is a saying that "soft-shelled turtle shoots mutton, and there is some Zhejiang pulp", which means that when cooking soft-shelled turtle and fried mutton, some "Zhejiang pulp" should be sprinkled for seasoning. The so-called Zhejiang pulp refers to the sweet juice squeezed from sugar cane, so we can think that at least at the end of the Warring States period, not only sugar cane was planted in Chu State in the south, but people were able to know how to squeeze the sweet juice as seasoning when cooking food. Because the poem "Evocation" describes the common folk custom and etiquette of evocation, and at the same time describes the common folk food such as rice, wheat, chicken and cattle, which shows that the extraction and consumption of sugarcane products were quite common at that time.
By the Western Han Dynasty, the application of sugarcane products had further developed. Liu Xin's Miscellanies of Xijing once mentioned that "the king of Fujian and Yue offered the fifth kind of nectar". The so-called manna refers to a solid product made of sugarcane, which should be a technological progress compared with the liquid "Zhejiang pulp" in the late Warring States period. Gaudi refers to Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Han Dynasty. It can be seen that sucrose products in the early Han Dynasty were relatively rare, otherwise they would not be presented to the emperor as a tribute. Of course, pulp still existed in the Han Dynasty, but its function improved. In November of the fifth year of Ding Yuan (before 1 12), Dan was born in Xinsi Shuo, and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty offered sacrifices in Ganquan Palace, which made dozens of people such as Sima Xiangru compose poems and praise. * * * Nineteen times of "Song of Sacrifice to the Suburb" were published, including the sentence "Too Zun Zhe Jiang Analyze Mao Chao". Sugarcane juice can be used to eliminate the residual wine in your morning. Therefore, at the latest in the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, people used sugarcane juice, which is not only a commonly used seasoning food, but also often used for hangover relief.
In the Tang Dynasty, a new model of sucrose production appeared. Due to the extensive planting and consumption of sugarcane, the original sun-drying production method can no longer meet the needs of society, so people look abroad to seek better production methods. The Book of the New Tang Dynasty records that in the 21st year of Zhenguan (647), Emperor Taizong left the method of boiling sugar to Mojie other countries, and then ordered to work in Yangzhou to trial-produce locally grown sugarcane. The color and taste of the finished product are far better than those of Mojie from other countries. At that time, people called it "sand sugar", also known as "frosting sugar". "Mojietuo" is a slave city-state in ancient India. In the south of Bihar, India, the whole of India was once unified, and the peacock dynasty was the most powerful. It was also a powerful country in India during the Gupta dynasty in the fourth century. China's Jin, Tang Priest, Xuanzang and others have all been here. Mocha's sucrose production mode is relatively advanced, which uses the heat energy of fire as evaporation mode, so the production cycle is relatively fast. From the perspective of promoting social and economic development, it is more practical for Emperor Taizong to send people all the way to get Buddhist scriptures than for Xuanzang to go to Tianzhu.