Daniel Otero

Possibly these were some of the words that Marco Polo had to endure upon his return to Venice after 20 years in China.

There has been a great debate amongst historians as to who were the first peoples to create the concept of noodles. People have long believed that noodles were called pasta in Italy and that it was an Italian creation. However, this started to change among historical circles, and since then, the fight has continued. Studies concluded that it wasn’t until the end of the 13th century when pasta made its majestic entrance into Italy. Before then, those who were known to be making noodles for centuries came from China.

The proper due credit didn’t come until the 1990s, when history books started to admit and make changes that certain creations already have been used centuries before in China. It is the case as the Chinese printing-press, which was used 300 years before the Gutenberg press in Germany.

The same happened with Italian gelato (ice cream), and recently this has also been rectified. The Mughal Empire in India had already created the sorbet dessert for the emperors.

By 2012, I had studied enough on my own to conclude that noodles like sorbet came to Italy centuries later after their being created in China and India. Actually, much later, probably thanks to Polo with his travels and discoveries across China and Southeast Asia. But I have had colleagues chastise me, saying that I was wrong and was “selling a ‘pipe dream’ or fallacy,” while others told me to check out the references on Wikipedia.org.

Thinking, ha, Wikipedia.org wasn’t and hasn’t been my only reference. But great historians like Jonathan Spence mentioned grand things about China decades before and that many of the greatest inventions ever used came from the Asian side of the world.

The problem has always circled around White and European superiority, and here is where many go wrong!

My feelings still stand, to give credit to whom it is due and let us not lie to ourselves. Through proper investigation, we can still uncover many clues about the past.

I can comprehend the arguments about Pizza Margherita and its creation in Naples. Or when people argue that an Empanada and Stromboli is just another larger version of Chinese dumpling. Well, let us be careful and think before we speak. There is a lot of historical evidence to be uncovered. In the meantime, let’s be objective and fair-minded. But to say that noodles are entirely Italian, is denying what the Chinese have contributed in the history of the world.