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They started to call this refined sugar chini because it came from this wonderful country called ‘Chini’ Wang Xuefeng |
Calcutta’s sugary sweet romance with chini — from spoonfuls in the chai to the syrup for the rosogolla — owes its origin to “Chini” or China.
Indians learnt from Yangzhou city the method of producing refined white sugar granules from brown chunks, said Chinese consul-general Wang Xuefeng last weekend while explaining the etymology of chini to a young audience at the Alipore-based International Management Institute. “They started to call this refined sugar chini because it came from this wonderful country called ‘Chini’.”
Wang’s curiosity to find the connection between the two words was stoked when he came to Calcutta last December. “Is it just a coincidence or is there any connection between the two words?”
He found the answer in a book, The History of Sugar by Ji Xianlin, where the author has recorded the history of making sugar from sugarcanes as a joint effort of Indian and Chinese people.
“The Indians invented the way to extract sugar from sugarcanes, squeezing the juice and then drying it in the sun until it became a syrup. They boiled the syrup till it turned into brown sugar chunks. During the Han dynasty (rule) over 2,000 years ago, the Indian method was introduced in Yangzhou, a prosperous city on the Silk Road in east China where the brown chunks were refined to make fine, white sugar grains,” Wang said.
After sweetening his keynote address at the international conference on “China, India and Beyond: Understanding Co-operation, Competition and Development”, organised by IMI Calcutta in collaboration with the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, Wang shifted to the present and hoped that the two countries “are on a fast track of healthy development”.
“China has become the largest trade partner for India and the volume of bilateral business has increased from US$ 3 billion at the beginning of the century to US$ 70 billion at present,” he said.
The consul-general said Chinese cities would love to welcome more Indian tourists, especially those looking for an exotic wedding destination other than Thailand, Indonesia and Dubai. “Our cities are beautiful and ideal for Indian weddings… Kunming is called the city of spring because of the weather. It is also a city of flowers. We are trying to promote it as a wedding destination for Indian families,” he said, adding to the list Lijiang, the city of romance.
