Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Noodle news

The human experience is full of coincidences. You will hear on the news today that conclusive proof has emerged that the Chinese were the inventors of the noodle. This is bad news for the Italians because in spite of Marco Polo's efforts, there has been an undercurrent of feeling in the populace that spaghetti was an Italian invention. After all, who can imagine an Italy without spaghetti?

But no, it was the Chinese who first came up with the idea. The proof has come from an archaeological excavation in China where a bowl of noodles made from pounded millet was discovered upside down in a slab of clay. It sounds like an apprentice's joke on his master from long ago, just before the earthquake struck.

Millet seeds are well known to Australian budgerigar keepers. It keeps them chirpy, and the birds like it too. Millet brooms made from the grass stems are outstanding devices for chasing kids from the kitchen. But that's not the coincidences I have in mind.

Yesterday the Chinese engineers at Jiuquan lit the blue touch paper and launched a couple of countrymen into orbit so they could take photographs of me lounging naked in my backyard spa. Spas are one of the few items left in Australia which are not manufactured in China and they want the secrets. They also want to survey the damage caused by the curiously named Longwang hurricane, which struck Asia last week.

Rockets have long been a specialty of the Chinese. I think they invented them - long ago - but maybe not as far back as noodles, which we now know were being gobbled their ancestors at least 4,000 years ago.

I'd like to find out what the Chinese word is for their space-pilot persons. I can't imagine they would embrace the American term "astronaut" or the Russian "cosmonaut." Custom would probably demand something like, "Soaring brothers of the October moon."

Nie Haisheng and Fei Junlong can be very proud that they were selected from a population of more than one and a quarter billion people to test the theory that it is possible to eat a bowl of noodles in space. This is the way of the future for China. But because of the lack of gravity the experiment will have its dangers. In such an environment a wet noodle becomes like a sort of stockwhip if slurped the wrong way, and you are not careful you are likely to lose an eye -although this minimised somewhat by the shape of Chinese eyes.

You may wonder why I have put Nie before Fei. It's because of the grammatical rule: "I before E, except after C.

Aside from the pass over my backyard spa and Longwang, Nie and Fei are expected to orbit the earth about eighty times before their supply of noodles run out.

Given that the circumference of the planet is about 24,000 miles, that's equivalent to a noodle more than 1,920, 000 miles long. But I'm not sure if this nautical or statute miles. Either way, its a lot of noodle.

The Chinese peoples were overjoyed at the success of the launch. Once the CZ12F was safely in orbit Fei radioed back his first impressions: "Feeling pretty good." He said, patting his stomach in Chinese. It wasn't very much considering the zillions of yen which had been poured into the project, but that's the sort observation which might be expected from the stellar representative of a peoples renowned for inscrutableness. Now, one and a quarter billion people are all awaiting his next comment after he eats his first bowl of noodles in space. If he again says, "Feeling pretty good." their efforts and sacrifices will be more than rewarded.

Nie and Fei are not the first Chinese persons into space. The Chinese Peoples Rocket Factory Number 1 sent another man up in 2003, but he was only in orbit for twenty one and a half hours. He didn't have any noodles on board. He had rice and discovered it took too long to cook with the lower pressure. So it was a case of either staying aloft and starving, or coming down.

I think the Americans have had some astronauts with some Chinese ancestry too, and then of course there was Mr Sulu on the starship Enterprise. He was Chinese wasn't he?

I saw TV footage of the CZ12F being launched. Obviously saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur is no longer the preferred choice of rocket fuel. Whatever they were using was very hot and provided plenty of thrust. It burned clean too. No clouds of noxious smoke like the American efforts leave behind.

Now I can't help but suspect this is a practice run for something more sensational which will coincide with the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Maybe a quick trip out around the moon and back, with the capsule parachuting into the main stadium during the closing ceremony. That would require a lot more noodles, but as Xinhua is fond of reporting, "The Chinese people have the will, confidence and capability to mount scientific peaks ceaselessly." To that glorious quote we should add, "In the quest for a better noodle."

© MMV Paul R. Weaver.

About the writer

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days.

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