A confectioner making onion candy, also known as sugar shallots, i.e. a Chinese-Taiwanese sweet made from liquid sugar.

After the syrup has been made into a large gold-coloured lump of a caramel-like substance in a wok floating on boiling water, its folded over a hook and stretched out.

This happens by forcefully pulling and swinging it around by hand, over and over again, somewhat akin to dough or chewing gum being stretched out.

Each time the newly obtained lengthy part is folded back together, and stretched anew, again and again.

This process is repeated over and over again, all the time by pulling and swinging the candy around in the air, all by ones own strength.

Here, the candyman even uses his own weight to pull the strands, in order to ease his heavy task somewhat with the aid of gravity.

Sometimes the strands are twisted before a new round of stretching. Eventually,  the candy is drawn-out a last time, now into a length of several meters, to obtain the required thickness, after which it is hung over a wooden stick and cut into small pieces resembling shallots, hence the name.