Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
though it was curious that they hadn’t brought them out earlier. The
noodles were delicious. Tonight the vegetables were better, too, fresh
bamboo shoots and forest mushrooms. The fermented stuff seemed
less rancid, and blessedly, nothing looked black, crispy, or eight-
legged.
“Who invented noodles, anyway?” Roxanne said.
Marlena answered brightly: “The Chinese did, of course.”
Moff slapped his forehead. “Oh, of course. It’s always the Chinese
influence. For a moment there, I was going to blame the Italians.”
“Marco Polo first ate noodles when he visited China,” Marlena
added.
“I saw a movie with Gary Cooper as Marco Polo,” Wyatt said.
“He’s talking to this Chinese guy, who’s played by Alan Hale senior
and has this big ol’ Fu Manchu moustache and slanted eye makeup.
So Marco Polo is eating noodles and he says, ‘Hey, Kemosabe, this
stuff is pretty good, what is it?’ And Alan Hale says, ‘Spa-get.’ Ha!
Like ‘spaghetti’ is what the Chinese call it. It’s hilarious. Spa-get, like
the Chinese invented spa food as well.”
Wendy laughed until Dwight broke in: “Well, there’s another
theory that the early ancestors of Italians invented noodles.”
“That’s not what the movie showed,” Wyatt replied.
“I mean it,” Dwight went on. “There are these Etruscan wall
paintings that prove that noodles were around in eight hundred B.C.,
if not earlier. That means noodles are in the genetic heritage of many
a modern-day Italian.”
“Excuse me,” Marlena said as evenly as she could. “The Chinese
have been eating noodles for over five thousand years.”
“Who says?” Dwight countered. “Did someone unearth a Chinese
takeout menu from the Ping-Pong dynasty?” He laughed at his own
little joke.
He kept his eyes fixed on Marlena. “We can debate the origins of
anything,” he said. “You make the case that all noodles originate
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