Indian Chinese Korean noodles ???

I belong to a Chinese dialect group called Hakka. Some prominent and well-known Hakka Chinese included former Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping, former Singaporean premier Lee Kuan Yew, former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-Hui, actor Chow Yun-Fat, etc.

Hakka noodles with a not so original design.

Imagine my surprise when i saw packets of instant noodles called Hakka Noodles at Mayuri, an Indian grocery store situated in Redmond. But the thing that actually caught my eyes was the Chinese character 辛 (pronounced like “sin”), which when use with other characters, can mean tired or spicy. I have been eating Nong Shim’s Shinramyun spicy Korean instant noodles since the early 90s so i am very familiar with its packaging material. The character 辛 on the Indian Hakka noodles packaging material looked awfully similar to the Korean one.

The original Shinramyun.

On closer inspection, not only did Hakka noodles copied the 辛 character verbatim, the background with Chinese characters matches exactly like Nong Shim’s Shinramyun.

Hakka noodles made in Mumbai.

So what we have here is a Chinese(Hakka)-style instant noodles packaged in a Korean-”inspired” bag and made in India (Mumbai)!