Wei Zhongming, 21, pulls noodles at his restaurant on Chengdu Beilu in Shanghai. "The skills of gun making have not been handed down from my father's generation," says Wei, of Hualong county in Qinghai Province. "Making noodles is now the only and easiest choice to make a living for most young people from my hometown." Photos: Cai Xianmin

By Liu Dong

Few know the sensitive, exotic and violent secrets of the successful noodle chain that is Lanzhou Lamian, or "Chinese KFC" to its many millions of fans across the nation.

The Ministry of Commerce hailed Lanzhou Lamian in 1999 as one of three fast foods most likely to succeed as a national franchise and since then, the noodle chain has apparently never looked back.

Although popular throughout northwestern China as early as the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the modern Muslim-style beef noodles were created by Ma Baozi in 1915, according to the Lanzhou Commerce Bureau's introduction on its official website.

"Nowadays Lanzhou Lamian restaurants can be found in every corner of the country," Kou Zongze, director of the food and beverage service department at Lanzhou Commerce Bureau told the Xinhua News Agency.

The oddest fact about Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles is they don't actually come from Lanzhou, according to Ma Zhongyuan, director of the Hualong liaison office in Shanghai.

More than 90 percent of Lanzhou Lamian restaurants can trace their origins to the approximate 232,500 residents of a poor, remote, 79-percent- Muslim county 259 kilometers' drive from Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province.

The average annual income of a Hualong Hui autonomous county resident living 2,500 meters above sea level in Qinghai Province was less than 1,192 yuan ($180) in 2008, according to the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

Customers at Wei's restaurant

Guns

Just as Lanzhou is more famous outside China as one of the Blacksmith Institute's 30 most polluted cities on the planet, Hualong is better known inside China as the illegal firearms workshop of the nation.

Local folklore has it that the penchant for gun running came to Hualong along with exiled Kuomintang soldiers, said Hualong resident Wei Zhongming.

What makes the illegal guns manufactured by Hualong people so popular is the same reason as their noodles, according to the Hualong police: the high-quality service and professionalism.

The 319 guns and 9,621 bullets seized by Hualong police in 140 arms smuggling cases they cracked from 1992 to 2002 don't include the thousands of guns from Hualong captured elsewhere.

Almost all gun crimes in China can be connected to Hualong, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

"It was like a cancer in the area," Zhao Xiaoan, director of Qunke sub-bureau of Hualong Public Security Bureau told local media.

"We fought it for years with very little effect. The fundamental cause is extreme poverty. People are too poor to live."

The hard struggle for ethnic minority people to subsist on the 2,740 barren square kilometers above Haidong has been going on for millennia, with tragic results for the rest of the country.

"The notorious underground ammunition manufacture business merely reflects the yearning of local people to get out of poverty," Ma Zhongyuan said.

Hualong is officially recognized as one of the 592 poorest counties out of the Chinese mainland's total 2,862 counties and county-level areas.

As if that wasn't enough, the central government in 2001 launched a tree-planting campaign along the Yangtze, Yellow and Lantsang rivers of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau that forced 56,000 young peasant farmers to seek a new line of work.

"To solve the gun-running problem and find a way to develop the economy, noodles became the most popular choice," Ma said.

"Hualong people are brave and diligent. Our first pulled noodle restaurant was opened outside Hualong in Xiamen, Fujian Province, as early as the late '80s."

Since then pulled noodles have become the main industry of Hualong, Ma explained. More and more Hualong people left home to ply their dough across a noodle-loving nation.

From Xinjiang through Heilongjiang to Hainan, 70,000 Hualong people operated some 10,000 Lanzhou Lamian restaurants in 26 provinces and 205 cities at the end of 2009: more than 90 percent of the pulled noodle market, according to official Hualong statistics.

Hualongers have popped up pulling noodles in South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Germany and Saudi Arabia.

Last year's annual income from Hualong noodle restaurants was 301 million yuan ($45.35 million), Ma said.

"We are the only local government in Qinghai Province that has a liaison office in every other province in the country to coordinate and support Hualong people develop their business," Ma said.

"Our goal is to build a Chinese fast food brand like KFC or McDonald's."

The good news is that gun running appears to be declining in Huanglong: Police cite 46 cases over the last five years.

Too good to be true

Ma's grand noodle vision is hard to imagine for 21-year-old Wei Zhongming.

"I think it's almost impossible to become China's KFC," he said.

Wei ought to know. He left Hualong with his parents at 14 to try his hand at pulled noodles.

During the last seven years, he has worked in both Zhejiang Province and Guangdong Province before joining his brother two years ago in Shanghai.

"Our previous business in Dongguan, Guangdong Province wasn't good," Wei said. "So I came to Shanghai for my brother.

"He has operated several pulled noodle restaurants here for two years. I wanted to join him and gain experience so that one day I could open up my own restaurant."

Wei's brother Wei Abudu has four noodle restaurants in Shanghai.

Wei Zhongming, his wife and two other Hualongers work 7 am-2 am daily on Chengdu Beilu, 10 minutes' walk from People's Square.

Typical of 2,000 Lanzhou Lamian restaurants in Shanghai, Wei's 40-square-meter space accommodates a maximum 50 customers, one-third sitting on temporary outdoor seats at peak time.

Wei's biggest headache is being unable to get a business license.

"We don't want to be an illegal restaurant," he said, "and we really want to get a license because sometimes our guests ask for an invoice and we can't supply one."

They applied more than a year ago. The restaurant next door applied much later and already received approval, Wei explained.

"I can't really fathom it," he said. "Sometimes it makes me wonder why."

Wei might be onto something: Two-thirds of Hualong noodle restaurants haven't been granted a business license or environmental approval by Shanghai bureaucrats, Ma said.

Without a business license or model involving training and capital, even the visionary Ma concedes Hualong noodles are unlikely to supplant KFC.

"Most Hualong people come from the poorest area of China and now they are living in the most prosperous area of the country," Ma said.

"You can't simply hope they immediately compete with those modern business tycoons.

They need to learn the basics to adapt to the huge contrast."

Most pulled noodle restaurants like his are low cost, low income, Wei said, too fragile for upsizing.

Hualong people, Wei concludes, "are less educated and unambitious. No one has thought about organizing us or leading us to do something big."

Maybe, just maybe Ma Xuejun is the man with that plan.

Ma came to Shanghai alone in 2004, opened his first Hualong pulled noodle restaurant and founded Yiqingzhai Muslim Meal Food and Beverage in 2007.

Now he employs 150 in five restaurants in Shanghai and Jiangsu Province. His restaurants have opened in six industrial zones and university canteens in Shanghai including Zhangjiang High-tech Park in the Pudong New Area.

Ma Xuejun's Hualong Lamian was chosen as the official restaurant by the government to represent Qinghai Province's food culture at the World Expo 2010 Park in Shanghai.

"Lanzhou Lamian is so popular in China but actually very few Lanzhou people go outside of Lanzhou to expand their business," Ma said. "Compared with Hualong people, they are too lazy.

"Although most pulled noodle restaurants' shop signs are Lanzhou Lamian, if you ask them, they will tell you they actually come from Hualong."

The problem is Hualong people still use the Lanzhou label as their brand for fear of losing customers, Ma Xuejun explained.

"Lack of confidence in our own brand is the key problem," he said.

"We might be able to make some money in the short term by using the Lanzhou Lamian brand, but eventually we will hurt our own."

For proud Hualongers like Ma Xuejun and Ma Zhongyuan, the Shanghai Expo was a watershed. More than 200,000 visitors tasted proper Hualong pulled noodles in the park.

"We have our unique selling point that Lanzhou Lamian can't beat: Our beef comes from yak that live on the plateau," Ma Xuejun said.

"I know the road ahead is long and tough, but I won't give up on my dream."