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Lisa Cam

The four great inventions of China are considered to be the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing. Ask a layperson or foodie, however, and their answer might be congee, rice noodles, wheat noodles and rice.
You may wonder why noodles appear twice.
According to Dr Siu Yan-ho, a lecturer in the department of Chinese language and literature at Hong Kong Baptist University, the difference between fun (rice noodles) and meen (wheat noodles) lies in their geographical origins.
“The reason for this difference mainly comes from the various kinds of crops grown in China. Northern China mainly produces wheat, while southern China mainly grows rice,” says Siu.

Even to talk about noodles in Hong Kong in simple fun and meen terms is still oversimplifying things.
Politically, Hong Kong was a part of China’s Guangdong province before it was ceded to Britain under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, and in 1997 was handed back to China, which designated it a special administrative region.
Hong Kong’s noodles have been heavily influenced by three subregions of Guangdong.
“After the war, the Chiu Chow and Hakka communities had a big influence on Hong Kong because many of them migrated to the city. Perhaps when these new migrants arrived in Hong Kong, they weren’t used to the local wonton noodles,” says Siu.
“So they made dishes from their hometowns, such as beef brisket and beef ball with rice noodles.
“Guangzhou [the capital of Guangdong] is the Cantonese capital city, and is considered the ‘land of plenty’, so seafood plays a huge role in local foods – especially shrimp.
“Many times in Hong Kong, we have seen wontons made with shrimp, which is a huge selling point.”
Wonton noodles are a Guangdong delicacy with a long history, and are hugely popular in Hong Kong.
First, we need to make a fish broth, then we add the flour and eggs. Back then, we mixed the dough all by hand and we needed to use a bamboo stick to press the dough
Frankie Hui, owner of Cheung Wing Kee, on making shrimp roe egg noodles
In Siu’s research of historical texts that date all the way back to the period of the Three Kingdoms almost 2,000 years ago, he found that the two characters for “wonton” were written with the element “to eat” to the left of the characters for “cloud” and “to swallow”.
This element has been dropped over the years, and Siu says that change could have been for many reasons.
Because of the sheer number of Chinese characters, literacy levels were not always high among the common people. As characters cannot be phoneticised, writing the correct character in the right context could be a challenge.
One of the reasons the characters for “wonton” dropped the “to eat” element could be simply so everyday folks were able to read it on the menu.

In Hong Kong, you cannot talk about wontons without talking about the noodles. One example of the region’s intangible cultural heritage is the art of bamboo noodle making, which produces the type of Cantonese egg noodles that are paired with wontons.
This craft was almost lost but has been kept alive by a few noodle makers, including Marco Li Ka-chi, whose great-grandfather was one of the original bamboo noodle makers in Macau – another special administrative region of China.
At first, Li’s father did not follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, but he soon changed his tune.
“My father realised that fewer and fewer shops were using this technique to make noodles,” Li says. “And before we had this shop in Hong Kong, my father had already suggested my uncle open a shop in Guangzhou, which also had an open space where customers could see the noodle-making process.”

“My uncle’s shop was doing quite well, so my father used the same recipe from my great-grandfather and opened a shop in Hong Kong.”
The main ingredients to make Cantonese egg noodles are eggs, flour and alkaline water. Adding alkali changes the taste and texture of the noodles and increases the elasticity of the dough, giving the noodles their distinct crunchy bite.
The secret lies in the bamboo technique – noodle makers balance a long bamboo pole with weights over the dough and knead it by jumping on the pole repeatedly.
“This technique was developed before there were machines to do the job,” Li says.

That is exactly how one of Hong Kong’s main suppliers of noodles, Cheung Wing Kee, started in the 1950s.
Asked about the process of making bamboo noodles in his factory, Cheung Wing Kee owner Frankie Hui says: “Take our shrimp roe egg noodle as an example.
“First, we need to make a fish broth, then we add the flour and eggs. Back then, we mixed the dough all by hand and we needed to use a bamboo stick to press the dough. That’s how noodles were made traditionally.
“Finally, we used a very simple machine to flatten the dough and cut it into noodles.”
The yield, though, was low for such a labour-intensive process.
“We could only make very small quantities. One person could make around one to two packs of noodles per day. We didn’t need a big team. One person could do everything,” says Hui. “A pack of noodles weighed around a dozen catties [7.2kg/16lb].”

The noodles evolved to capture the flavours of the ingredients they were served with. For more than 80 years, Chinese restaurant Yung Kee has been making its famous charcoal-roasted goose to the delight of Hongkongers.
The best noodles to pair with this smoky, juicy poultry dish are lai fun, thicker rice noodles made with rice and mung beans. The neutral flavour of lai fun allows the star of the dish, the roast goose, to shine. The noodles take on the complex flavours from the broth and the goose.
“Lai fun has a more bouncy texture, so it won’t get soggy so easily,” says Tang Lap-san, the roast meat chef of Yung Kee Restaurant in Hong Kong’s Central district.
“The goose is roasted with charcoal, which has a nice smoky aroma. The flavour of the meat and the broth gets absorbed in the lai fun, so the noodles have more depth.”
So, there you have it – when talking about noodles in Hong Kong, we touch upon history dating back thousands of years, and upon intangible cultural heritage.


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Hong Kong noodle history and the different noodle styles explained

Shrimp roe thick noodle lo mien from Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle in Hong Kong. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Roast goose with lai fun rice noodles from Yung Kee in Hong Kong. Learn about the different kinds of noodles served in the city, how they are traditionally made, and the foods they are typically paired with. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Wheat noodles originate in Northern China, while rice noodles have Southern Chinese origins, says Dr Siu Yan-ho, a lecturer in Chinese language and literature at Baptist University. 

Marco Li Ka-chi of Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle balancing on a bamboo pole to make noodles. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

Shrimp roe thick noodle lo mien at Kwan Kee Bamboo Noodle. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

 Cheung Wing Kee started making noodles in the 1950s, producing small quantities using labour-intensive methods.

Roast goose with lai fun rice noodles. The thicker, neutral-tasting noodles are perfect for absorbing the flavours from the roast goose and broth. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

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Lifestyle

Food & Drink

We explain how rice noodles, wheat noodles, egg noodles, bamboo pole noodles are made and the best foods to eat them with


From pressing noodle dough with a bamboo pole to the history of that favourite dish, wonton noodles, learn about the different noodle styles in Hong Kong and the foods they go with best.


Hong Kong

Hong Kong culture

Chinese cuisine

Asian Cuisine