泡面的发展史

About 4,000 of the 5,000 terrible cliches about instant ramen begin with starving college students. Momofuku Ando didn't aim to stuff hungry co-eds with his creation—he wanted to end world hunger.

十有八九的误传都说拉面是由食不裹腹的大学生发明的。安藤百福的目标可不是让学生们仅仅把他的发明成果填饱肚子，他想要终结世界上的饥饿问题。

In the last hundred years, Japan has given the world a number of remarkable inventions — the Walkman, the bullet train, the digital camera, the fuel-efficient car, karaoke. But in a poll conducted in December 2000, the Japanese people chose instant ramen as the greatest Japanese innovation of the twentieth century.

在过去的几百年间，日本为世界创造了一些列著名的发明，从随身音乐播放器（Walkman），到高铁，数码相机，节能汽车，卡拉OK。在2000年12月份的一次投票中，日本人民选择方便面作为20世纪日本为世界做出的最大发明。

And as unlikely as it seems, instant ramen's creator, Momofuku Ando, had exactly such ambitions in mind. Instant ramen may seem like a trivial consumer product, but it has helped millions of people survive economic and natural disasters, which is no small accomplishment. And in the aftermath of Japan's recent tsunami and nuclear crisis, with instant ramen feeding thousands of displaced citizens, Ando's legacy has proven its importance once more.

和看起来不同的是，拉面的发明者安藤百福，在脑子里早就有这个宏伟的理想。方便面看起来就像是普通的消费品，但是在经济和自然灾害中它帮助了数百万人生存了下来，这可不是什么小成就。在战后的日本紧接着尽力了台风和核武器危机，拉面让数千流离失所的人民饱腹，再一次证明安藤发明的伟大。

On August 15, 1945, the day after Japan surrendered to the Allies, Ando was walking through his hometown of Osaka, surveying the damage wrought by years of war. The city had been spared the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it was devastated nevertheless.

1945年8月15日，日本投降以后，安藤走在自己大阪的街上，查看多年战争留下的伤害。虽然大阪免受两次长期和广岛两次原子投放的侵害，不过本身也已经之力破碎。

Aerial bombings had destroyed the factory and two office buildings that Ando had built, leaving him in search of a new occupation. During his walk, he stumbled across a group of people gathered in the wreckage behind the train station, lined up outside a makeshift ramen stall and waiting for something to eat.

空投的炸弹毁了安藤造的工厂和两栋办公大楼，逼得他只能令谋生路。在他步行的时候，他发现一大群人聚在火车站后面的废墟哪里，在一个临时拉面摊前面排队，等着发吃的。

Ando thought: People are willing to go through this much suffering for a bowl of ramen? As it turns out, noodle soup is near-universal comfort food, and Japanese people turned to ramen for comfort.

安藤想：为什么人们愿意大费周章就为了要一碗拉面？结果是，面条是公认的带来安慰的食物，日本民众想要通过拉面带来安慰。

Food shortages continued to plague Japan for years after World War II, and Ando concluded that hunger was the most pressing issue of his time. He believed that "peace will come to the world when all its people have enough to eat." Ando wanted to help Japan feed its entire population.

二战以后，食物的短缺还是影响了日本好几年，安藤认为饥饿问题时当时最迫在眉睫的。他认为：“只有人民不饥饿，世界和平才会到来。安藤要帮助日本解决所有人口的饥饿问题。

To start, he drew up a set of criteria for the perfect postwar food. It had to be:

一开始他为完美的战后食物列了一些标准，它必须是

Tasty

味道好的

Nonperishable

不容易坏的

Ready in less than three minutes

最好3分钟之内就可以开吃

Economical

便宜的

Safe and health

安全健康的

Ando remembered the demand for ramen he'd witnessed more than a decade earlier. Then he got to work making a mass-produced noodle soup that would satisfy the harried workers of an increasingly industrial country.

安藤记得十多年前亲眼看见人们对于拉面的需要。然后他就打算大批量生产汤面，满足日益工业化国家的受到饥饿困扰的工人。

Ando spent a year trying to preserve ramen noodles without success; the texture of the rehydrated noodles was never right. But one day, the story goes, he threw some noodles into the tempura oil his wife had heated to make dinner, only to discover that frying not only dehydrated the noodles, but also created tiny perforations that made them cook more quickly. Instant noodles were born.

安藤试了一年但是拉面的保存问题还是没法结局，脱水面条的质地不适合保存。但是有一天，他的妻子炸天妇罗做晚餐，他把面丢了一点到油里面，发现不光面条可以保存，而且油炸过后，面条表面出现小孔更容易快速煮好。

And so, at the age of forty-eight, Ando embarked on his third and final career: Mr. Noodle. "I came to understand that all of my failure — all of my shame — was like muscle added to my body," He'd felt terribly guilty when his bank failed, and instant ramen promised a kind of redemption. Ando promoted his product with a nearly religious zeal, as though he were on a crusade to feed the world — to end hunger with ramen.

所以在48岁的时候安藤开启了第三次也是最后一次事业，面条先生，“我开始认识到我所有的失败——所有不堪——就像是被加到身体上的肌肉。在他的公司破产以后他感到深深的内疚，但是方便面的发明像是一种救赎。他宣传自己产品的时候带着一种近乎宗教的热忱，仿佛他献身于世界，用拉面解决饥饿。

When Chikin Ramen, Ando's first product, hit the shelves in 1958, the Japanese public initially saw it as a luxury product — it cost slightly more than fresh soup at the local ramen shop. But consumers quickly embraced the convenience of making ramen at home, and sales took off. Instant ramen became a staple food in Japan, and other companies entered the market.

安藤的第一件产品，肌肉拉面在1958年上架，日本民众一开始认为这是一件奢侈品，因为它比当地新鲜出炉的拉面甚至还贵。不过消费者们很快就接受了这种能在家做的拉面，因为很方便，然后这款产品就脱销了。

Ando, in turn, looked for international customers. Undaunted by the American consumer's ignorance of ramen and even chopsticks, Ando declared "Let them eat it with forks!"

而且安藤还要觊觎国际市场上面的顾客。在面对美国顾客对拉面甚至是筷子的不屑一顾，安藤说，“那就让他们用叉子吃！”

On a business trip to the united States in 1966, Ando had his next great idea. According to legend, Ando was demonstrating his product to supermarket executives in Los Angeles when he observed them repurposing their Styrofoam coffee cups as ramen bowls .

在1966年去美国的一次出差，根据自传，他向洛杉矶超市总裁展示他的产品中，他发现可以把Styrofoam的泡沫塑料咖啡杯当作拉面碗。

In

trigued, Ando replicated these makeshift containers for a new product, which took five more years to develop. When Cup Noodles debuted in 1971, they were an immediate sensation: Nissin, Ando's company, has now sold more than 20 billion units. Instant ramen packaged in its very own heat-resistant container — what could be more convenient?

受到了这个启发，安藤把合格临时的容器变成一个新产品，又花了5年的时间研发。在杯面1971年上市以后，立刻引发轰动，安藤的日清公司，销售了200亿碗。方便面有了它自己的耐热容器——还能有什么比这个更方便？

When Ando died in 2007, Noguchi delivered a eulogy to a baseball stadium full of mourners, including two former prime ministers of Japan. One of the former premiers praised Ando as "the creator of a culinary culture that postwar Japan can be proud of." Momofuku Ando turned instant ramen into a national symbol, and instant ramen turned Momofuku Ando into a national hero.

2007年安藤去世，Noguchi在满是悼念群众的棒球馆里致悼词，人群中还包括两位日本前首相。其中一位首相赞誉安藤是战后日本的骄傲美食文化制造者。安藤百福让方便面成为国家标志，而方便面成就了他作为国家英雄。

As of 2008, global consumption of instant ramen reached 94 billion packages per year — that's an average of fourteen bowls per person. In the modern world, instant ramen has truly become the food of the people. As Momofuku Ando put it, "Mankind is Noodlekind."

截止到2008年，全球方便面的销售量在940亿包——平均每人吃14碗。当今社会，拉面真正成为人民的食物，就像安藤百福说的，“人人都爱面”。

（翻译：林浔鸥）