Lamian or Ramen Noodles: Hawaii Five-0's The Man Who Fell From the Sky

Summary: Waywardness, venality and ramen noodles appropriate tragedy, scapegoats and lamian noodles on Hawaii Five-0's The Man Who Fell from the Sky Oct. 5, 2018.

lamian noodles in their home country; Turpan, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, western China; Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005, 02:57:39: T Chu, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

Academic disgrace, government agents and ramen noodles are not how they appear in the Hawaii Five-0 action police procedural series episode Ke Kanaka I Hā'ule Mai Ka Lewa Mai Oct. 5, 2018.

Director Eagle Egilsson and writers Matt Wheeler and David Wolkove broach agendas in Season 9's second episode, 195th overall, The Man Who Fell From the Sky. Her and her brother Koa's (Kunal Sharma) orphaning, not waywardness, causes Tani Rey's (Meaghan Rath) cribbing exam answers and cracking Captain Keo's (Eric Steinberg) dental crown. A Marrakesh mission whose public divulgence scapegoats Central Intelligence Agency order-takers for order-givers, not easy money, drives Agent Greer (Rochelle Aytes) to Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos).

Tani exposes, as comfort food for enduring Police Academy expulsion until Hawaii Five-0 employment, that "You know, I ate some ramen and reflected on my mistakes."

Tani furnishes nothing further about ramen noodles, as stand-alones or in the Hawaiian cuisine favorite, saimin (from the Chinese 細麵: 細, "thin" and 麵, "noodle").

Ramen noodles go by a culturally appropriated name in Japanese even though they get their culturally authentic birth name, lamian, in Chinese cuisine, culture and language. They have anecdotal and authenticated precedents in wheat flour honed by Chinese farmers and rural workers into nutritious noodles for farmed vegetables and meat, or not. They integrate into international cuisines through immigration and importation of Chinese farmers and laborers into Africa; the Americas; Australia; east, south and southeast Asia; and Europe.

Different regions in mainland China juggle different flours, albeit predominantly rice or wheat, for different preparations of lamian noodles with dairy, meat, spice and vegetable ingredients.

Itinerant and migrant Chinese farmers, laborers and traders kept African, American, Asian, Australian and European economies on the cutting edges of 19th-century agro-industrial and transportation technology.

George Solt, assistant professor at New York University, listed imported Chinese noodles in Taking Ramen Seriously: Food, Labor, and Everyday Life in Modern Japan from 2009. His book, The Untold History of Ramen, published Feb. 22, 2014, and updated from his research dissertation for the University of California-San Diego, mentions lamian noodles. Its subtitle, How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze, nets ramen noodles from lamian noodle soups that nourished Chinese traders in 19th-century markets.

Economic and political overlaps in Japan and United States post-war diplomacy and trade and observation of lamian noodles' society-wide appeal offered optimal opportunities for cultural appropriation.

Lamian noodles predate ramen noodles in the Chinese trading- and working-class cuisines of the American West's railroad towns and tracks and Hawaii's pineapple and sugar plantations.

Lamian noodles queue up as Chinese street vendor fare, in Chinese restaurant menus and on Chinese specialty food store shelves and in sugar plantation-era (1841-2016) saimin. Saimin requires boneless, fork-roasted pork; broth; cabbage; eggs; garlic- and paprika-seasoned smoke-cured pork sausage; green onions; red-algae seaweed; SPAM ham and pork; and white fish paste. Should Kamekona Tupuola's (Taylor Wily) inputs and investments suggest saimin minestrone and scampi, with lamian, ramen or both noodles, for upcoming Hawaiianized Italian Steve's Place menus?

Lamian noodles and ramen noodles respectively turn up in Hawaii as bottom-up, groundswell, people-friendly food and as top-down, postwar Japan- and United States-marketed trendy international cuisine.

While visiting the police academy to ask a favor of her former instructor, Captain Keo (Eric Steinberg), Hawaii Five-0 team member Tani Rey (Meaghan Rath) admits to reflecting on her academy expulsion over ramen in CBS TV's Hawaii Five-0 season 9, episode 2, Ke Kanaka I Hā'ule Mai Ka Lewa Mai (The Man Who Fell From the Sky): CBS Hawaii Five-0 episode 9.02 promotional photo via SpoilerTV Oct. 4, 2018

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

lamian noodles in their home country; Turpan, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, western China; Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005, 02:57:39: T Chu, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/spyderball/68704712/

While visiting the police academy to ask a favor of her former instructor, Captain Keo (Eric Steinberg), Five-0 team member Tani Rey (Meaghan Rath) admits to reflecting on her academy expulsion over ramen in CBS TV's Hawaii Five-0 season 9, episode 2, Ke Kanaka I Hā'ule Mai Ka Lewa Mai (The Man Who Fell From the Sky): CBS Hawaii Five-0 episode 9.02 promotional photo via SpoilerTV Oct. 4, 2018, @ https://www.spoilertv.com/2018/09/hawaii-five-0-episode-902-ke-kanaka-i.html

For further information:

Brickman, Sophie. 21 May 2014. "The History of the Ramen Noodle." The New Yorker > Culture Desk.

"Ke Kanaha I Hā'ule Mai Ka Lewa Mai (The Man Who Fell from the Sky)." Hawaii Five-0 2010: The Ninth Season. Los Angeles CA: CBS Television Studios, Oct. 5, 2018.

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