Henan village cooks up an instant noodle success story with challenges

ZHENGZHOU - It has been almost 30 years, but Wang Hongbin from Nanjie, a village in Central China's Henan province, still has vivid memories of the day his instant noodles first went on sale.

"The streets were flooded with people," Wang recalled. "For most of them, it was the first time they had even seen instant noodles."

It was 1989 when China's reform and opening-up had been ongoing for around 10 years, but the variety of food in the stores was still limited, especially in rural areas. In that era however, culinary novelties were appearing all the time, some of the first signs of the prosperity to come.