Qiatang means eating sugar.

Qiatang is also called maltose. It is a kind of sugar made from rice (starch) and malt through saccharification and boiling. It is viscous and is commonly known as maltose. Since its creation in the Western Zhou Dynasty, it has been widely spread among the people and widely eaten. There are records of the consumption and production of malt sugar in the history books from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Han Dynasty. Among them, "Qi Min Yao Shu" (Chapter 89) written by Jia Sixie of the Northern Wei Dynasty has the most detailed description. The book describes the methods, steps, and key points of making caramel, which will be used by future generations for a long time.

To this day, this type of starch sugar sweetener is still produced, has a good market, and still plays a certain role in the sugar industry. But generally speaking, sugar production refers to sugar production using sugar cane and beets as raw materials. Sugar cane sugar production was first recorded in India's "Vedas" and China's "Chu Ci" in 300 BC. These two countries are the earliest sugarcane planting countries in the world and are also the birthplaces of the two major sugarcane sugar production. In the early history of sugar production in the world, China and India occupied important positions.

Mechanized sugar production

In the stage of mechanized sugar production from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, the success of beet sugar production greatly promoted the development of the sugar industry and directly led to the decline of the sugar industry. Mechanization. The development of mechanized sugar industry. The origin and production of beet sugar were mainly in Europe, and the 19th century was an era of capitalist development in Europe. Advanced industry and developed science and technology provided many favorable conditions for the mechanization of the sugar industry. . Most of the modern mechanized sugar production processes and equipment originated from the European beet sugar industry.

The period from the early 19th century to the 1860s was the main period of formation of the mechanized sugar industry, and many new sugar-making processes and equipment continued to emerge. During this period, the beet sugar industry has completed basic technologies such as exudation and juice extraction, sugar juice with ash and secondary carbonation for purification, multi-effect evaporation, vacuum boiling sugar crystallization, and centrifugal separation of honey into sugar. The Rise of the Beet Sugar Industry For a long time, the main raw material used for sugar production has been sugar cane. Sugar cane can only grow in tropical and subtropical areas, and sugar cane cannot be grown in cold areas.