Many of us have seen Chinese chefs hand pull slender strands of noodles from a lump of dough like a magic trick.
I can never get tired of watching Chinese noodle men in action.
This noodle making magic technique which requires no machines but only a pair of deft skilful hands, go back at least 4,000 years to the Tibetan Plateau near the source of the Yellow River in today's Qinghai province of China.
The noodle existed at least 1,500 years before the first Chinese emperor founded the Qin dynasty in 221 BC i.e. this noodle is much older than China itself.
Imagine for a moment, a 4,000 year noodle culture survived and remains mainstream to this day not only in China but around the world. Noodle culture now come in countless forms across the globe but Chinese hand pull noodle has not changed much for 4,000 years!?
In 2002, archeologists found a clump of noodles in an upturned clay bowl in 喇家遗址 Lajia bronze age archeological site in 青海 Qinghai province in northwest China.
Lajia was a Yellow River settlement high on the Tibetan Plateau. Historians theorised that the Lajia settlement was suddenly buried under mud due to an earthquake. Human remains and artefacts were buried and preserved for over 4,000 years (according to carbon dating). (Wikipedia photo.)
The unfortunate Lajia inhabitants were eating noodles when disaster struck 4,000 years ago.
The noodle made of a blend of 小米 and 黄米 millets was slender and 50cm long. (Wikipedia photo.)
The millet grains were pounded or grounded into flour, mixed with water and hand kneaded into dough.
At this point, there is a debate about the actual technique the Lajia people used to make the long strand of noodle. Millet dough is not very stretchable so, it would be challenging to make long noodles with it.
There are two possible solutions.
One was to steam the millet dough and press it through a perforated mould while it was still hot. The extruded long strands of dough were dropped directly into boiling water, cooking it, forming the long noodles.
The second possible technique was to knead the millet dough with alkaline water (made by mixing water with ash 蓬灰 obtained by burning 蓬草 weed). This technique which makes dough stretchable is still used in making pulled noodles though the alkaline mineral is synthesised today instead of actually burning 蓬草.
Extruded or hand pulled remains unresolved.
In the clay bowl, together with the long strand of noodle, scientists also found traces of animal fat, probably of beef or lamb.
We can imagine that the bowl of beef or lamb noodle hasn't change much during these 4,000 years!
Two hundred kilometres east of Lajia archeological site is 兰州 Lanzhou, a Yellow River city of Gansu province. It's natural that noodles hopped flowed from 喇家 Lajia down the Yellow River to nearby 兰州 Lanzhou.
At Lanzhou, the dough was kneaded with alkaline water, stretched and hand pulled. (Lajia noodle may be made in the same way too, but it is still being debated.)
The hand pull noodle technique persisted to this day and is called 兰州拉面 Lanzhou la mian or Lanzhou pulled noodle. Lajia noodle was forgotten, buried under mud until 2002.
From this beginning, noodles spread in all directions over the overland and maritime trade routes throughout human civilisation except the Americas - where even with the arrival of Europeans there in 15th century AD, noodles did not make much headway in Central & South American food culture. (Wikipedia map.)
So, Lanzhou la mian is not merely noodles from Lanzhou or just the Lanzhou style of noodles, it is the ancestor of today's global noodle culture.
The next time you see a noodle chef hand pull noodles, you are seeing living history - an ancient technique that goes back 4,000 years.
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