Big in Japan: An Ode to Ramen (Part II)

by Matthew Firestone on

This week, Big in Japan will be bringing you a four-part series on the most perfect of foods. Part I of the series aimed to debunk the myth of ramen as being mere instant noodles. Today’s column will trace the hundreds of years of history behind this savory snack.

I really love ramen.

I mean, how many other foods out there are the products of centuries of culinary revision? How many other foods out there crossed oceans of antiquity on multiple occasions? How many other foods out there have been adapted and re-adapted to local tastes time and again?

Bananas may have colonized the New World, coffee may have catapulted itself out of Arabia and salt may have built empires. But, none of these foods hits the spot quite like a steaming bowl of miso ramen topped with minced garlic and fresh bean sprouts.

The history and lore behind Nature’s most perfect food is worthy of textbooks.

Originating in China, scholars debate exactly when this hardiest of noodles was first introduced to Japan. Although it may have crossed over at several times during the history of Japan, the first recorded record of ramen-eating was in the late 17th century by the shogunate of the Tokugawa.

Needless to say, the Tokugawa dynasty was the first to unify Japan, so I think the connection between ramen noodles and empire-building is obvious.

Of course, ramen was not introduced to the Japanese masses until the Meiji era when the country first opened its doors to foreign interests. For most of Japan’s history, the diet consisted simply of steamed rice, vegetables and seafood, which is partly to explain why the country suddenly became incessant gourmands in the late 19th century.

During the Meiji era, American and European cuisine became the height of fashion, which sparked a large cattle- and pork-rearing industry in Japan. However, the real culinary revolution of the late 19th century was taking place in the Chinatowns of Kobe and Yokohama, where Chinese immigrants opened up food stalls in the busy ports. Here, along with gyōza (dumplings, ギョーザ), another one of my favourite dishes, Japanese commoners tasted their first bowls of sweet, delicious ramen.

As history will have it, World War II put something of a damper on the Japanese obsession with eating gourmet, though the food industry was quick to bounce back. In the 1950s, cheap US flour imports flooded the Japanese market, while ex-soldiers who had previously been in China proceeded to set up ramen shops across the country. In a few short years, ramen shops took Japan by storm, becoming something of a neighborhood landmark.

Much like McDonald’s in 1950s America, a family trip to the ramen shop was good eating.

The 1950s also brought about the invention of the instant noodle at the hands of the late Momofuku Ando, founder and chairman of Nissin Foods. Now, I don’t want to diminish the accomplishments of what has been regarded as one of the greatest Japanese inventions of the 20th century. After all, it’s Ando’s noodles that swept the world and the made ramen a household name. But, as I’ve no doubt tried my hardest to explain to you the reader, instant noodles are not ramen.

Still don’t believe me? In Part III, I discuss the varieties and flavors of ramen that you can find in Japan. In Part IV, I’ll highlight a few regional specialties, and share some of my own ramen recipes.

Getting Hungry? Check out our delicious photo gallery of Japanese food. %Gallery-6477%

** Special thanks to Flickr users kk+ (Noodle Chef) and Joey-Tigger (Cup o’Noodles) **

Drivers Beware: The Most Dangerous Roads in the World

by Martha Edwards on

Living near the Rocky Mountains, I thought I had some experience with dangerous roads. The ones I frequent twist and in turn around, over and under the huge, jagged mountains, through avalanche plains, with only a guardrail protecting your car from plummeting off a cliff’s edge. It wasn’t until I started travelling that I realized that the most dangerous road that I’ve encountered in Canada would be considered a smooth, luxurious ride in other countries.

So if our roads aren’t dangerous, where are the dangerous ones? I did a bit of research and here are the most dangerous roads in the world according to USA Today (click here for the full list):

  1. Bolivia’s The Old Yungus Road, from La Paz to Coroico
  2. Brazil’s Interstate 116
  3. China’s Sichuan-Tibet Highway
  4. Costa Rica’s Pan-American Highway
  5. Croatia’s coastal roads (any of ’em)

Judging by this article on the Old Yungus Road, I think I’ll pass on taking a trip on it anytime soon.

Chinese Buffet – Part 20: An Air China Ending

by Kelly Amabile on

This is the final installment of the 20-part Chinese Buffet series that chronicled the travels of an American woman visiting China for the first time.

Before I begin this story, let me clarify that the airline I write about in this post is Air China, and NOT China Airlines, which has been in the news this week for its frightening runway explosion. However, it should be noted that Air China has received its own share of bad press in recent weeks too.

I had read some of that unsettling news just days before I boarded an Air China flight to Beijing in early July. I was a little leery, but too eager about my trip to lose any sleep over it.

The flight to China on CA982 was fine — once we got off the ground. We were held on the runway at JFK for almost an hour before taking-off, but I blame that on the airport and not the airline.

Three weeks later, I took another Air China flight to leave the country, and this time, it was the airline’s fault that we did not depart on time.

I was headed to Melbourne, Australia. A one-way ticket on Air China was the cheapest I could find without having to make three or four plane changes. In fact, CA177 was a direct overnight flight — ten hours straight to my destination while I slept.

Too good to be true, huh?

I should have been on alert after my ticket purchase fiasco a few weeks prior: I booked over the phone, and arranged for an Air China messenger to deliver the paper ticket to where I was staying in Shanghai. There was no e-ticket option available, so the messenger also brought a credit card machine so we could complete the sale on the spot. That proved to be quite an ordeal, since he could not get a signal for the portable machine, and subsequently spent an hour walking around the parking lot of the Green Court apartments in Pudong trying to get the transaction to go through. After several phone calls and lots of pacing, the sale was eventually completed.

I didn’t want to admit it, but this seemed a warning sign that things might not go smoothly. If it was this complicated to buy an airline ticket in China, what was to be expected at the airport and on the flight?

Uh….this:

I showed up at Pudong International about 3:30 pm on August 1. The flight was supposed to start boarding at 5:30 and I think this sign (with the wrong airline name on it!) was posted at 6:30. “Mechanical Trouble” is so much worse than a bad weather or air traffic delay — suddenly there were a bazillion unknowns, and nothing to do but sit around and wonder about all of them while we waited for flight status updates.

In this case, no news was certainly NOT good news.

About an hour later, with no further announcements, dinner was served! Passengers started lining up in the boarding area for dishes of warm rice and pork — the actual meals that we would have received on the plane:

At this point I was happy to have befriended a great gal from South Dakota (of all places!!!) named Emily. A photographer, world traveler and blogger too, Emily and I soon learned that we had much in common and plenty to talk about. Which was a wonderful distraction from the fact that we had no clue whether or not we’d be boarding a (possibly “malfunctioning”) airplane.

About an hour after they fed us, there was an announcement made in Chinese and everyone started to move. An airport staff woman approached Emily and I, explaining that, “The shuttle will now take you to the hotel.”

We were corralled back through immigration into China again, then bused off to our “Super 8 meets Motel 6” airport hotel:

Thank goodness I had a cool roommate that kept me laughing, and well-connected with her high-tech travel gear. Emily, who had recently moved to Shanghai, was headed to Sydney on a business trip (CA177 flies to Sydney after Melbourne), and was traveling with a GSM mobile and laptop. She let me borrow the phone to contact my friends in Australia, and use the web to shoot an email to family back home. We chatted about blogging, looked at each other’s photos online, and laughed at our freakishly similar sleeping attire — a Kodak moment, no doubt:

The only instructions we received from the hotel staff was to stay put in our rooms and wait for a call in the morning to return to the airport. Needless to say, I did not sleep well and was on alert when the call finally came at 6:30 am:

“Hello, please come quickly! The buses will leave for airport at 6:30!!”

I looked out the window to see folks already boarding bus number one. We frantically gathered our belongings and hopped on the third shuttle bus within ten minutes. Back at the airport, we then went through immigration again and resumed the waiting game. They directed us back to the same gate where the same “mechanical troubles” sign still stood.

It was hard to tell if I was uninformed because of the language barrier, or because Air China was keeping us in the dark about what was going on. I think it was a bit of both, because I definitely saw Chinese passengers complaining and asking questions. I just had no clue as to the specifics of the scenario.

Eventually, boarding began, and as passengers went through, an Air China official gave each person 500 RMB as compensation for their troubles. But lots of people were still not happy — there was all sorts of discontent among the crowd. We asked for someone to translate. Folks were questioning the safety of the plane, demanding more money back and refusing to board.

Although I too had my concerns about the safety of the plane, I was not interested in hanging out with an angry airport mob. I figured that if the pilot was willing to fly it, the plane must be in good condition. I had to believe it was safe to fly. So I boarded, and spent two hours watching these guys remove luggage from the cargo bin for passengers who had decided not to go through with the flight. It was all quite nerve-racking…

And I had lost my new buddy too! Emily and I parted ways when I chose to get on the plane and she called off her business trip to Australia. There was no longer any point in waiting to see when the flight might leave — she’d never make her meeting in Sydney on time.

I think it was sometime around 1 pm when we finally departed. For much of the flight, I fought off a nagging fear that the “mechanical troubles” would return. It was the first time I’ve ever felt afraid to fly, and at one point I did breakdown and shed a few tears of exhaustion. I ate very little of my last Chinese meal since nerves had by now wreaked havoc on my stomach.

But I love flying, and this experience hasn’t changed my opinion. Although I felt clueless throughout much of the delay, Air China did “take care of us” to some degree — they fed us, gave us a place to stay, and efficiently transported us to and from the airport hotel. I sat next to a Chinese man on the flight who was angry that other Chinese passengers refused to board without additional compensation. He was right, it was frustrating — we would have departed much earlier if these folks had not held out for more money. (In the end we each got 800 RMB for our troubles.)

Last I heard from Emily, she was still trying to get a refund for her ticket from Air China. You can read her version of our adventure here. (Be sure to look at the funny Chinglish signs from our motel room!)

After those flying solo tears were done, I took some deep breaths and selected a movie for my viewing pleasure. This delayed departure from China could have happened in any country — it was not a uniquely Chinese experience. Although, I sensed something orderly about the chaos of the airplane debacle that had surfaced at other moments during my three weeks in the country.

It’s challenging to find the right words to close with — because this was simply an introduction, an overview, an appetizer. I left China slightly frazzled, but satisfied with my first look at the PRC. I suspect that so much will change before I return (even if it’s just a year or two from now!), that it might feel like an introduction all over again, the second time around.

Band on the Run: Chinese History in Lahaina, Maui

by Ember Swift on

Ember Swift, Canadian musician and touring performer, will be keeping us up-to-date on what it’s like to tour a band throughout North America. Having just arrived back from Beijing where she spent three months (check out her “Canadian in Beijing” series), she offers a musician’s perspective on road life. Enjoy!

I had to get away from resort land today. I packed my shoulder bag and computer, sunscreen, a camera, a hat and a book to read and slung it over my shoulder before I hopped down the stairwell to the lobby of the hotel (the elevators take too long.)

No one was around from the wedding party and I hung around the front entrance for about fifteen minutes before I decided to just walk. I had no idea how far it is to Lahaina by foot, but I was willing to do the trek. Anything to find some history and culture and conversation with locals.

Twenty minutes into my walk, I could tell it was going to be about an hour’s walk before I’d hit the town. I was still walking by the grounds of other resorts and other golf courses, so I hadn’t even made it from the overall resort-world “campus” yet.

I saw a bakery truck pulling out of one of the resort driveways and I flagged him down. Turns out the driver, “Jules,” a native Hawaiian guy, is an ex-musician and visual artist who still plays guitar for himself when he’s got down time. We had a great chat as he drove me into town. The whole drive took another fifteen minutes, nearly, and so it was great to meet an interesting (and generous) person and even nicer to not have to walk.

He dropped me off on “Front Street” with a smile and wished me well. I was then in Lahaina where tourist shops are bursting from every opening, t-shirts and bathing suits and postcard racks extending their advertising onto the sidewalk like tree roots on a wooded path to trip you into the shops.

Shopping is the last thing I’m here to do so when I saw the Chinese historical museum I turned in without a second thought.

Sitting behind a desk and looking gentle and open was an amazing woman with silver hair and a brilliant smile named Busaba Partacharya (in Thai — Thailand being her native country — or Yip Gwai Gee, in Catonese). She has been in Hawaii for fourteen years researching “the ancestors here,” as she put it – or, the history of Chinese settlement in Hawaii. She’s just volunteering but has put together several documents and traced several family clans to Maui over the years.

She and I spoke some Mandarin together and she asked me all about my trip to China. We bonded over research topics and our love for China and the notion of ancestry. I stood there at the front entrance for about fifteen minutes before she invited me to look around the museum and I remembered where I was. She gestured widely with her arm in a slow and graceful sweep outward as though she were sitting in a perpetual state of tai chi calm.

I had been so taken by her that I hadn’t even looked around me until then. I put down my shoulder bag by her desk and wandered in. I already felt at home.

The museum is a large wooden house-like structure that used to the clubhouse for the early Chinese settlers. Originally, many Chinese came to Maui (and the other Hawaiian islands) to work on things like the railroad, the sugarcane plantations and irrigation drilling into the mountainside. Many Chinese returned back to China but several stayed. This clubhouse was built in 1912 by the fraternal Wo Hing Society, a chapter of the Chee Kung Tong society that has roots in 17th century China. This society formed a social gathering place and also helped the Chinese in Lahaina maintain social and political ties with China.

Around the 1940s, most of the Society members had moved away to greater opportunities and not many Chinese people chose to remain in Lahaina. This building fell pretty to termites and rot until 1983 when the Lahaina Restoration Foundation entered into a long-term agreement with the Wo Hing Society to restore the building and open it to the public.

The first floor is a collection of Chinese artifacts gathered in Lahaina, as well as old photos from the Society, and the second floor displays the old cook stove and cooking utensils from when the cookhouse was located there. There is also a temple upstairs that offers incense to various Buddha or Bodhisattva shrines around the room.

When I came back down, Busaba motioned me over to her desk again and began to talk to me in greater detail about her work. She is in the midst of a long-term translation project for documents that were printed by the Wo Hing Society that were discovered in 1999. Some date back as far as 1906 and chronicle the activities and stories of the Chinese society in Lahaina at that time and until it largely dispersed.

She is currently the only one working on the project and she is looking for help. She’s volunteering and looking for people to help her with the work. She gave me several fliers to put around Toronto when I got back there (or any place I thought it would find others, she said) to hopefully connect with the diasporas of Chinese people around the world. There’s no money in it, she said, but the translation is slow and needs other minds and energy. The stack of papers on her desk were testimony to this truth. Too much for one person, for sure.

I said I would offer what I could and she said, “The ancestors always bring the answers. Maybe you’re one of them.” And then she winked at me and wished me well. I wished her well too and told her I’d try my best.

And I will.

I felt thoughtful as I continued into Lahaina to check out the rest of the town. Thoughtful and peaceful. “Wo Hing” means harmony and prosperity (in Cantonese) and I think some of that hopefulness had come up through those museum floorboards and found its way into the breathing of this visitor.

Chinese Buffet – Part 19: Visit is Over. Memories Remain.

by Kelly Amabile on
Chinese Buffet is a month-long series that chronicles the travels of an American woman who visited China for the first time in July 2007.

I wish I could have experienced China on a bicycle. Riding through the streets, forced to lay my camera aside for awhile, I’m sure I would have viewed aspects of the country differently from a two-wheeled perspective.

But I am a horrible bike rider!

This was as close as I got to riding my own bike in China. On my last day in Shanghai, we rented a bicycle-made-for-three in Century Park. With four wheels and no traffic, it was smooth sailing during our early morning ride:

And then there was my rickshaw driver in Suzhou, who gave me a taste of what authentic bike riding in China is all about. He did the pedaling work while I simply enjoyed the view and cool breeze. When the ride was over, he totally tried to swindle me out of more money than we had agreed upon, but I couldn’t care less. Just look at the smile on this guy:

He must have been one of the most jovial pedicab drivers in town, and kept me laughing the entire time. And that’s what I’ll remember most.

So what if I didn’t get to do everything I wanted? It’s really all about who you meet in the end. The more I travel, the more I believe that it’s not really about the places at all — it’s about the people you encounter.

I don’t want to spend my life trying to check off sites from a list of places I should see before I die. I just want to visit different countries and see what each reveals to me, no matter if it’s mundane or extraordinary.

Take Maurice, for example. Just an ordinary guy visiting Suzhou the same day I was there:

This tall funny Frenchman appeared like a mirage — walking towards me in his bright qipao shirt with a mobile phone in his hand at the exact moment when I was frantically searching for a payphone. He was such a cheerful champ when I asked if I could borrow his phone. We chatted briefly and parted ways, but several hours later I ran into him again in one of Suzhou’s gardens. We talked a bit more, and I asked for a photo, to capture our memorable meeting.

More often though, it was the other way around — people would approach me and ask if they could take a photo together. When this happened, I sometimes asked if we could also take one on my camera, so I could remember them. Usually I was approached by Chinese tourists who were making their first visit to the big city:

This Chinese woman was visiting Beijing for the very first time with her husband and son. She approached me in the rose garden at the Temple of Heaven.

“Excuse me? You take picture with me?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you. And welcome to China! You are a very beautiful woman.”

I’ll miss these unsolicited “beautiful woman” compliments!

I also met Heng Yi Ling at the same park, a sweet 18 year-old visiting Beijing with her dad. While we listened to women singing opera, Heng Yi’s dad encouraged her to practice speaking English with me. Talking to Chinese children was especially amusing and enjoyable.

In Shanghai, a woman making her first visit to the city sat next to me while we ate dumplings. When we were finished eating, she asked for a photo…and I asked for one too:

There was usually limited conversation with the older Chinese tourists I met, but they were encounters just the same, and interactions with people always seem to linger longest in my mind.

As I type this, I’m remembering other folks too — there was Cedric from Philadelphia, who I said hello to at the Forbidden City because I noticed he was wearing a tee shirt from the school I used to work at. After chatting for a few moments, he snapped a photo of me too!

I met lots of expats also, and was grateful for the perspective they shared — my Couchsurfing host, the folks at The Bookworm and True Run Media, my Shanghai friends and their network of international pals.

So… I didn’t get to ride a bike through the hutongs of Beijing, or try some hot pot, or visit a tea house or do the touristy thing and buy a latte at the Forbidden City Starbucks in the final days before it closed!

But I met a whole bunch of interesting people. And learned that the world is full of a lot of snappy happy folks, including myself! Which is not such a bad thing, because I now have a virtual memory box of faces, names and interactions that shaped my first look at China.

There is one more special person I met on my way out of the country. I’ll wrap up the Chinese Buffet series tomorrow with a story about the adventure we shared…