Noodle Stand Owner Becomes the D
Cheng Yunfu (程运付), 39, has been making and selling ramen noodles in the village fair for the past 15 years for three yuan (USD 0.46) a bowl, just one-fourth or fifths or more of the price in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. "The weird fellow" was shown in a short video online in early February and he became a celebrity overnight.
Since then, nicknamed Brother Ramen, the drably dressed farmer from Yangshuhang Village, Liangqiu Town, Linyi City of East China's Shandong Province (山东临沂市费县梁邱镇杨树行村), has been surrounded by tens of hundreds of bloggers and anchorpersons of video streaming sites from across the country, who report him to their fans, readers or viewers. All such people do their work boisterously and some in exaggerating ways beyond his wildest imagination.
One young female anchorperson cried out her wish to marry him, to draw attention to her video streaming site. One social media company brought in a schoolchild holding up a placard written: “I want to learn how to make Ramen from you.” Someone even knelt down and kowtowed to him, for reasons no one could explain.
Shocked and even angered by these outrageous reactions to him, Cheng came to realize that that is just another way of living and earning money, whatever that is. "All these people were not real and serious about making ramen, they just conjure up all sorts of tricks to draw attention to them," he said. "I like honest people who say what they mean."
"In the beginning they crowded into my home, I couldn't bear it. I said no you cannot come in my room and you are not letting me rest. Later more and more people came I dared not even open the yard gate. It is a mess. They yell a lot. The social media people are too noisy. I am tired."
He was reminded that the first row of social media people surrounding his stand, where he pulls and swings noodles out of a wheat flower dough, could earn 10,000 - 20,000 yuan a day. “That sum of money, I have to work three or four months to earn,” he said with envy.
Would he consider launching a video streaming account himself and start reaping in fortunes of such scales? He said that he did dwell on the thought for a while but decided to give up, because "say pretty things to please fans" was not his ideal way of making money. "I don't feel safe and comfortable earning money that way."
He is shy of the screen. As if dodging the screen, he said: "I'm afraid I look too provincial."
He appears to be indifferent and aloof to the sudden fame and the many social media people flooding towards him, because if one day he gets forsaken by the social media and falls back to be an ordinary people again, he said he would still go to the Market, where his customers are just about as many as the social media people now with him.
Asked about his philosophy behind keeping his price no higher than three yuan, the noodle maker proudly professed a love for photography and that the reason lies behind the most impressive photo he once shot. It was of someone digging in the underground sewage tunnel. "That day it was 40 degrees Celsius and he looked scorched and charred in the sun. I saw it, which drove to my heart that labourers are not leading an easy life."
"I lived through hard times and I would calculate down to the fen (100 fen make up one yuan)," he said. "To spend the money nor not, and where to, one must think well of it."
"For some people one more yuan earned means they can afford a bag of salt, which can last a few months. One must calculate these things well, (as) money is hard to come by."
In an interview with a journalist a few days ago, he actually broke into tears and said he felt deeply sorry for his family having suffered due to his poor ability in "managing (economic) affairs of the household".
If there is one silver lining to his personal fame, it is that the village has benefited tremendously economically from the many strangers coming over from various parts of the country. They eat, drink, and may stay up for the night even.
His village has quickly widened the main road and offers free parking services, and has a bus shuttling people in and out of the village. To show even more hospitality, the village offers tea free.
Cheng started selling noodles in 2005. Originally it was not ramen he was making but noodles got out of a presser for two or three years, selling for two yuan per bowl. When he found that such machine-pressed noodles were not ramen per se, and didn't taste as well as ramen, he went to learn how to make ramen from a relative.
The noodle business enabled him from the start to be in no lack of pocket money "all the time", when his child was still small while he had heretofore felt the sore need for money. In 2007 he began to make ramen, which proved more resilient and chewier than machine-pressed noodles. It was then he raised the price to three yuan, inclusive of some beef slices.
His business visibly improved in 2008 because "after two or three years in the business," he said, "I built a name of being honest, selling nice but affordable noodles, and more and more old people visiting the Market learned of me."
“Then in 2010 prices increased so much around and many people complained of inflation, I kept to three yuan, though I didn't serve beef any more,” he said. “With the meat gone, I gave customers a big more noodles so that they could still fill up their bellies full and warm.”
These days he can still make 0.7-0.8 yuan per bowl for profit and brings home 200-300 yuan a day, which was far more than in the past. The best day, he can sell more than 600 bowls of noodles a day, being kept busy non-stop until well past six in the afternoon.
Now he is famous, he can expect to make and sell off 600 bowls of ramen noodles with confidence, every day. The best of the best days of the past will be an average day from now on.
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