Chinese tourists are willing to put up with hard beds and cold noodles for a reason: they are champion shoppers who prefer to concentrate their spending on luxury branded goods, which are cheaper than back home and guaranteed not to be fakes.

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Equally unfamiliar but more immediately palatable is a dish of cold soba noodles with tororo, a kind of mountain yam.

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Isabella Rossellini, sporting a wig that appears to have been woven from cold egg noodles, plays Lady Port-Huntly, rich but legless, who runs a competition to discover, as the title suggests, the saddest music in the world.

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Cold Asian noodle salads make sense, he says, because noodles keep well and even basic kitchens can make them tasty.

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The noodles are served hot, in bowls of steaming broth, or cold, in a bowl with dipping sauce.

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