a betting game using a length of sugar-cane?

a few days ago, i was at a supermarket when i saw cut sugar-cane pieces on sale at 80 cents a piece. these days, when the sugar-cane juice seller buys the sugar-cane, it comes neatly cut and packed in a cardboard box. in the past, he would get the whole length of sugar-canes with the leaves lopped off. he would then have to cut the canes into suitable length to pass through the crushing machine.

however, complete sugar-cane plants are still sold during the few days after the chinese new year, just before the 8th day when the chinese, especially the hokkiens, pray to the sky god (tii kong). the worshippers would buy a pair of sugar cane plants and tie them to the sides of the offering table. at the end of the prayer session, which was usually after midnight, they would break off the leaves and burn them together with the incense papers.

when we lived in the kampong, quite a number of families would have a patch somewhere around the house, either in front, at the back or at the side, growing sugar-cane. sugar-cane plants are not very fussy and so do not require very fertile soil to grow well. i think it was quite easy to propogate the plants - we grew them from the stems taken from the uppermost part of a young cane. the plants grew quite fast and we would usually harvest them before the flowers appeared.

i remember as a young boy, when i still had a full set of teeth and strong ones, i used to buy short pieces of cut sugar-cane at 5 cents a piece to eat. sometimes, we would get the sugar-cane from our home patch. first, you needed those strong teeth to peel off the hard exterior. when the exterior had been stripped clean, you took bite-sizes of the pulpy flesh, again by breaking them with with your teeth. you chewed the pulpy flesh until you have savoured all the juice, then you spit out the pulp.

sometimes we would share to buy the cut sugar-cane and played a game to see who, between the two of us, would get the longer length of the cane or pay for the cane. this was how we played the game. we would buy a cut cane, strip it off its hard exterior and then we would each hold one end of the cane. at the count of three, we would both use our combined strength to break the pulpy fresh.

when the cane broke into two parts, with each of us holding one part, we would compare the length of the fibre at the break point. the one holding to the piece with a longer fibre won. he would either take the longer length or get to keep the whole cane (two pieces) depending on the prior agreement.