The rise and rise of the instant noodle nation
The industry has been through some rough patches, but demand among the young suggests that it is in good health, Zhang Lei reports.
In 1992, the founder of Master Kong, Wei Yingzhou, surveyed northern China and created braised beef noodles according to northern tastes, setting up a factory in Tianjin. The brand's classic braised beef noodles still dominate the country's instant noodle market today. In addition to a bag of powder, it came with a bag of beef sauce, a cardboard bowl and plastic fork that generated a revolution in instant noodle making. In 1994, just two years after the Master Kong factory opened, the company had sold 200 million packets of noodles.
As Master Kong's braised beef noodles stamped their authority on the market, Uni-President, which had entered the mainland market earlier, changed its target to focus on the next generation. In 1999, the company recruited an advertising firm that came up with the idea of inserting into packets collectors' cards of heroes from the Chinese literature classic Water Margin. Since then, eating noodles and collecting cards have been a childhood memory for tens of millions of Chinese.
The height of the instant noodle industry's fortunes was in 2012 when 44 billion packets were sold, meaning that each person was eating 34 packets of instant noodles a year. From that point, sales went into decline. The financial writer Wu Xiaobo, in his book China's Reform Behind a Pack of Instant Noodles, says consumption upgrades and the disappearance of "migrant workers' dividends", attributed to the decline mostly.
However, gastronomy influencers livestreaming their dining habits in front of webcams at home became a powerful force on the internet in China in 2017, and instant noodles began to make a comeback. It was at this time that the food blogger Big Stomach Mizijun posted the first food video on Weibo, showing that she ate 10 bowls of hot spicy chicken noodles in one go, and it immediately became popular. The video was viewed by more than 2.18 million times within a month.
Zhang Junqian, a Beijing college student, says she watches the internet food channel Ms Kinoshita. Kinoshita, a Japanese woman popular for eating tons of meals in just a single sitting, is one of China's most favorite Japanese public figures.
"Seeing her eating so happily makes me feel good, and it seems to drive out any worries I have," Zhang says.
Figures from the internet shopping platforms Taobao and Tmall show that sales of instant noodles peak at 10 pm and continue to sell well for a few hours after that. Although placing an order does not necessarily mean that someone eats a similar product they have on hand there and then, it suggests that people sitting alone late into the night have a keen desire for them.
Similar figures from Taobao show the proportion of consumer orders in first- and second-tier cities from those in their 20s between midnight and 6 am is higher than at the peak online shopping time of 8 pm to midnight.
Just as noodles were seen as a token of surging prosperity in the late 1980s and in the '90s, instant noodles can be regarded as a sign of material wealth in China's internet economy. So instant noodles seemed to be far from disappearing from the eating habits of young Chinese, let alone from the memories of older people who were there when they took off in China all those years ago.
Contact the writer at zhanglei@chinadaily.com.cn
