A Chinese street vendor demonstrates traditional sugar painting methods to create an artistic lollipop of a crane bird. Each piece of candy is hand-made on a marble slab in a professional manner, revealing the years of experience that this lady has had with the art of sugar painting. Her movements are smooth and controlled, dribbling molten sugar in intricate patterns to create the finished food art work.
Edible Chinese candy art can be found in a wide variety of shapes. Some lollipops depict goldfish, dragons and butterflies. The similarity between each of these designs lies in the sweet, tasty candy that they are formed out of. Traditional Chinese sugar artists don’t decide which design to make. Instead, they leave the selection to the customer’s luck. As part of their road side stalls, Chinese sugar artists have a selection wheel (shown in the beginning of this video). This is a board with a spinning arm at its center. Around the sides of the board are images of birds, dragons, flower baskets, fish etc. The customer spins the revolving arm, and whichever design the arm lands on is the design that the sugar artist makes for them. In this video the customer’s spin has earned him a candy painting of a crane. In Chinese culture, the meaning of the crane is longevity, wisdom, nobility and good fortune.
