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 (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)!

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