Living in China definitely warps ones internal calibers of what qualifies as quality (both in terms of product or service quality and envornmental conditions), though living on the periphery of China can be just as bad with the common fallacy of “China is polluted, here is not China; therefore, here is not polluted.”
I live and die by my apps which report the air quality index (AQI)–空气质量指数 (kong1qi4 zhi4liang4 zhi3shu4). The word is a fairly direct translation, with 空气 meaning air, 质量 meaning quality, and 指数 meaning index. “指数” is an easy word to remember because its individual characters mean “point [as in, to point with your finger] + number,” but my focus today is on quality.
“质量” can be broken down into 质 (zhi4), meaning the nature or character of something, and 量 (liang4), referring to the quantity or amount. Though 质量 is the highest frequency word containing 质, the characters base meaning is probably best exemplified by 素质 (su4zhi4) or 性质 (xing4zhi4), both of which mean quality in a more abstract sense, and are worthy of full discussions in their own rights.
The “opposite” of 质量, i.e. quantity as opposed to quality, is 数量 (shu4liang4, literally “number amount”). However, if we are speaking about research, e.g. qualitative and quantitative, the respective terms in Chinese are 定量 (ding4liang4) and 定性 (ding4xing4), where 量 and 性 are serving as shorthand for “number” and “nature” with 定 functioning as “to determine.”
Another interesting aspect of 质 and 质量 is the physics-specific meanings. 质 can mean “matter” or “substance,” though that is more clear when paired with 物 in 物质 (wu4zhi4, “matter; substance”), and 质 is the building block of all matter as a proton (质子，zhi4zi3 [Note: the zi3 is not a neutral tone]). In physics, 质量 means mass, which makes it much easier to distinguish between mass and weight (重量, “zhong4liang4,” literally “weight amount”) because mass is intrinsic to the substance while weight depends on gravitation.
I had a 9:56 train to Daegu from Seoul, so though I woke up early, I didn’t have a lot of time to putter around in the morning. After a cup of coffee, I packed my stuff up and rushed to the bus stop around 7:30 hoping the morning commuters were still eating their breakfasts. The bus was not crowded, and got me to the station by 8.
I immediately went to a Dunkin Donuts and hung out for about an hour. Though still too early to board, I was having trouble staying focused, so I starting browsing the shops to see if I could grab a salad to eat on the train (which would take 4 hours). None of the shops in the train station sold anything other than junk food and rice balls, and even the closest convenience store outside of the train station didn’t have what I was looking for. I guess two donuts would be enough to tide me over.
Trains in Korea are such a different experience than in China. You don’t have to go through a metal detector or put your luggage through an X-ray machine. There is no ticket check, there is just a marking on the floor indicating that you are entering the “paid area” and it is totally on your honor. The train was pretty empty, though, as it stopped a dozen times, people got on and off. As we were leaving Seoul, a conductor walked down the aisle looking at his handheld device and glancing at where people were sitting. He asked to see the tickets of some people, who it turned out, were sitting in the wrong car, but otherwise he was just checking that the occupied seats were so marked in the computer system.
The last twenty minutes of the trip were very crowded with a lot of people on “standing tickets.” I almost got off at the wrong station, when we stopped at Daegu (I needed to go to Daegu East), but I caught myself in time. Once again, to get off the train and exit the station there is no check (unlike China where you have to show your ticket or even Japan where you go through subway station style turnstile). I headed to the Starbucks in the Shingasae department store to meet my classmate. I got their first and ordered a coffee to wait. Since drip would have taken five minutes to make, I asked for an Americano, but it still took ten minutes to come out. Dammit Starbucks, you have one job — fast coffee. My friend’s baby wouldn’t stop staring at me, and I guess we’ll be communicating in English, which feels weird after years of speaking in Chinese.
I’m staying in a “spare” apartment in an office tower. Oh god, it’s like heaven, especially after the hellish conditions of that last hostel. After a month on the road, it is really nice to be able to spread out, leave my stuff in the bathroom, and not use earphones.
I found a largish supermarket to stock up on food and saw four different groups of foreigners at the grocery store. So weird. Bread, peanut butter, coffee beans, eggs, ramen, soju, two salads, salad dressing. I haven’t left the apartment since (some 40 hours later). I finished Iron Fist, watched a bunch of Youtube videos, and have otherwise been relaxing.
Apologies for the delay in getting this posted, I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed with the sheer volume of how much I intend to accomplish, and the daily updates, especially when life is often monotonous, seem a bit much. I’ll be trying a schedule of every other day from now on.
Monday morning, I woke up early as usual and had a coffee in the hostel lobby while doing a bit of studying. However, after about an hour, I just couldn’t put up with the environment anymore, and tracked down a bakery chain (Paris Baguette) for a more comfortable seat to do a bit of studying and work. Towards midday, I swung by the hostel to change up my backpack contents then hopped on the subway to go to Inwangsan, a small mountain in the city that looked really cool from the Namsan view the other day. I was pretty starving when I got off the subway, and though I was expecting a variety of restaurants, I could only find a gimbap place, which was fine, just not what I was in the mood for.
As I was eating, I recalled that there was a worthwhile museum across the street (Seoul Prison Museum), and delighted in the serendipity of my half-baked planning until I remembered it was Monday, the day museums are closed. Oh well. I headed up a 20% grade to reach the Inwangsan temple, which didn’t have anything worth commenting on, and continued up on a path to try to reach the top of the mountain. There were some spectacular views, marred only by the pollution (I actually busted out my face mask today). At one particularly scenic spot, I bumped into a South African who asked if I could help him take a picture. 200 photos later, I was able to snap my own selfie and continue on.
The path to the top of the mountain follows an ancient (but restored) city wall. However, apparently, the mountain is also closed on Mondays, so I couldn’t go all the way up. I followed the wall down until I hit street level, at which point I was only a couple of blocks from Seoul’s train station. I swung by to pick up a train ticket (which will be accounted for on Wednesday). There was a long line for the ticket window, so I tried a machine. Although there was only one person at each of the cash accepting machines, I still had to wait about 10 minutes, because none of them could figure out how to work it. The user interface, available in Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English was extremely intuitive. I didn’t get it. I misread the price of the train tickets and ended up getting a handful of coins as change.
I hopped a bus back to Itaewon and hung out at a coffee shop for about hour charging my phone, while doing a bit of studying on Lingodeer. I wanted to go back to that bar (Magpies) to try the other craft beers, only to find they close on the last Monday of every month. This was starting to get ridiculous.
An unforgivable act of aggression against good taste
I stopped into a Mexican restaurant I had been regularly passing to give it a try, ordering enchiladas. Oh god, it was so bad. Exactly like the “Mexican” food you’d get at a student bar in China, only four times the price. Its what you’d expect from someone recreating Mexican cuisine by only seeing a picture online never trying the real food. I still wanted a beer and was planning to meet someone at 9, so I had tons of time to kill. I decided to go to my backup plan, a Brewdog brewery, which was also closed for some reason. Checking other bars online, I went to one (Craft Hans) that looked like it had reasonable prices, only to discover that is because they serve their beer in tiny glasses. I nursed that beer for a long time, but eventually wanted to change locations.
I popped into a place called “Fat Alberts” which was full of old expats, and pulled up a seat at the bar. I went for a dark beer, which apparently comes served with a cinnamon sugar frosted rim (okay….). I got to talking to a couple of old guys next to me at the bar, and timed my beer for when I needed to go to the subway station.
Meeting up Soo, her favorite and second favorite cafes were both closed. We eventually found one, but were kicked out after about half an hour because they were also closing. So that was it for the night.
There was a small break in the pollution in the morning, so after a cup of coffee I went for a longish run around Dragon Hill and along the river. Back in the hostel, cleaned up, rested and did some research on good places to eat. I trekked all the way back to Ikseondong to try a little hole in the wall recommended by the online expat mag. It took a little while to find, but was totally worth, even the boss’s repeated attempts to get me to go away. It was definitely the best price/quality ratio of anything I have eaten in Korea so far.
I went over to Insadong, a touristy arts/culture street, to find a little cafe to while away the afternoon. Despite having visited as a tourist on each of my previous trips to Seoul, I explored the area more than I had ever done before, but didn’t find anything other than a Starbucks. I whipped out my phone to look up cafes, and found a popular one just outside Insadong. I was about to order an americano as usual, but Cafe Themselves offers a daily drip coffee (from their self-roasted selections). I spent the afternoon studying and writing, and even laying my head down for a cat nap.
Just before rush hour, I walked back to the bus stop. While waiting at a crosswalk, some rando tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was interested in a cultural exchange. Nope, don’t have time. I was determined to get back to Itaewon and have some freaking craft beer.
On the bus ride, I was texting the person who bailed on the date from Saturday. I casually mentioned that I was leaving Seoul the next day and going to have some beers tonight. She asked if she could join, so I sent her the address. The bar was open and empty, which makes sense for 6pm on a Tuesday night. The IPA and Porter were both amazing, and when I ordered a Kolsch, I also got a grilled cheese sandwich (the only food available at the bar, as opposed to the basement location next door) because I was getting a bit tipsy. I had watched a guy making one earlier, and it smelled amazing, though when I ordered one it was far less impressive.
Though the bar was starting to get interesting, I didn’t want to get completely wasted, so I took off to get some more food in me. I popped into the convenience store near the guesthouse, hoping for a salad or something, but settled on a “mac and cheese” ramen and a small package of kimchi. I went up to the guesthouse to eat and hang out. I texted the person asking “where are you?” “At home eating a steak” “You’re having a steak and didn’t invite me?” No answer until the next day. C’est la vie.
I wonder if you could see North Korea on a clear day.
The dirty, smelly hostel, the pollution, and
the solitude have been starting to affect my mood, which doesn’t exactly have a
high baseline. I’m planning maneuvers to get out of Seoul, but that hasn’t
stopped me from aggressively reaching out through social networking apps to
find interesting people to hang out with or share a meal. At one point, I had
two “dates” arranged for the weekend, but both fell through.
Saturday morning was still fairly polluted,
but I couldn’t spend another day just hiding out. So, I walked to the nearby
Namsan Park, and hiked up to the Seoul N Tower. There were some spectacular
views of the city to the south and north, and I did feel the need to shell out
10 bucks to go up to the observation deck. I walked down the other side of the
mountain, and having skipped breakfast, was feeling right hungry as I
transitioned by park to city. Myeondong, a popular shopping/dining/fashion
area, was not too far away, but I stumbled into the Namdaemun market before I
even got that far. By chance I found a narrow passageway through one block of
market stalls that specialized in some kind of fish (cutlassfish). I squeezed
into one crowded restaurant and feasted on the cutlassfish stew, assorted
kimchi, salted fish, rice, and steamed egg.
I took a bus back to Itaewon, swung by the
hostel, and then spent the afternoon in a coffee shop. It started to get
crowded around 6, and I realized I needed to do something for dinner. I
showered and dressed despite not having any particular plans, and looked on
Trip Advisor for somewhere to eat.
I went over to a local craft beer place, had a pint and read more Pride and Prejudice than I have all month. You’d think I’d have more time to just read. It was nice to be relaxing with a beer in a popular craft brewery, and though I was reading, I figured if I hung out for a while, I’d eventually strike up a conversation with someone. I finished my first glass and ran to the bathroom, only to find that my seat had been stolen, so I guess one beer was enough and I had no choice but to adjust my expectations. It was nearly 8 and my stomach was complaining, so I headed up the hill to try a Nashville Hot Chicken joint I’d passed by the other day. I’d never even heard of Nashville Hot Chicken until it popped up in my YouTube a couple months ago. I had four pieces, no drink no sides, at medium (habanero-level) spiciness. It was alright.
The next morning, the AQI dropped below 90,
so I laced up my running shoes and did a loop around Yongsan. I decided to have
a “brunch” at a place called Uncle Sam’s Pancakes. It was a tiny little place,
and I spent a leisurely two hours studying Korean. I impressed the waitress
with my studiousness and we chatted briefly on my way out. I guess the trick is
to have the textbook out – working on a computer is too impersonal, but books are
more inviting of curiosity.
I had a longish WeChat call back at the hostel
before I could grab my swimming suit and take the subway directly over to the
World Cup stadium. Sauna, nap, swimming (1500 m!), and sauna, all with a bit of
texting peeps on my way in and out of the locker room. I had my computer with
me to write and study, but I was pretty wiped out after all that.
I had made new plans to meet someone for coffee
at 8, so by 6ish I decided to leave the sauna to get a salad at the HomePlus.
It was closed again! So, I just took the subway over to the neighborhood where
we were going to meet and took a loop, soaking in the bustling street life and
food carts. I grabbed a “protein” salad from a convenience store and scarfed it
down to stave off starvation and had a grape soda to kill some time.
Ikseondong is an interesting cluster of old
buildings that have all been converted into super trendy restaurants and cafes.
It reminded me of something you’d find in Japan. Seoul would be a lot of fun if
I had some income and a network of friends to hang out with. I can’t believe
how expensive the coffee and strawberry cake (chiffon? Fromage? something fancy
like that).
With no signs of the pollution letting up, but not wishing to spend my day in the dirty hostel, I decided to first have a long breakfast at McDonald’s, going for the ultimate deluxe breakfast and only leaving when the lunch rush started coming in. Afterwards, I hopped a bus across the river to hang out in the Starfield Mall underneath the Coex Conference/Exhibition Center. Reportedly Asia’s largest underground mall, it certainly provided me an opportunity to stretch my legs without sucking in too my pm2.5.
I walked a loop to explore my food options, getting hungrier by the minute, but I decided to go with a Jamba Juice (wow! haven’t seen one of those in years), so I could keep wondering around. There weren’t any movies at the Megabox I was interested in seeing, I didn’t want to drop 25 bucks on the aquarium, and I couldn’t find anything I could read in the library (!), so I eventually settled in a coffee shop to while away the afternoon.
I took the same bus back to Itaewon in the middle of rush hour, but it wasn’t too bad. I was right starving, but it took me a while to decide what I wanted to eat. Noticing at least a dozen Turkish doner kebab places following the path up to the mosque (I wonder why that is), I picked the one that was full of brown people.
Back at the hostel, I was vegging on the chaise when an American teacher checked in. We chatted a bit, and when she went out to meet a friend for a drink, I went to bed early.
If it wasn’t already apparent that I am crazy, this should settle it. I’m about a month into cramming Korean into my brain, and I’m already building a dictionary. It’s a work in progress and more importantly its part of my process for retaining vocabulary.
I don’t have the patience to sit and attempt to memorize vocabulary lists. I don’t mind copying a vocabulary word here or there, either by hand or into the computer, but I also recoiled at the idea of just writing a character or word 50 times in a row (as is standard among Chinese learners). I always found flashcards to be a mixed blessing. Whether physical or digital, its a lot of work maintaining a deck–adding new items and removing items you are confident about. Something about the randomness seems suboptimal.
On the other hand, I am willing to take the time to engage with large volumes of vocabulary items while performing a variety of menial tasks–copying from app/pdf worksheet/textbook to paper, typing into computer, sorting and collating lists in Excel, removing duplicates, finding typos, etc. There is something immensely satisfying to discover that some words that stubbornly remain in the peripheral of my vocabulary have actually shown up across multiple sources. The clouds parts, the sun shines through, and the word catches on fire under the laser focus of attention.
I think there is something to say about the wisdom of the crowd. If you try learning a language from any given source, there are going to be tons of words that raise eyebrows for their seeming impracticality. However, once you start averaging across multiple sources, you can identify the truly widespread and common words (through a sort of low level manual corpus analysis). I actually wrote a paper taking this idea as a hack for estimating age of acquisition of characters among Chinese native speakers (I should probably dust it off and finally get around to submitting it to a journal). On the other hand, its interesting to see which words are completely glossed over because its assumed you already know it. However, there is a messiness to the merging process, as I’m not working off of official vocabulary lists.
The cool thing is I finally have a rough estimate of my vocabulary in Korean, under 1000 words. Of course, there is the entirety of Duolingo’s vocabulary to be integrated as well as additional lessons from the current three sources (TTMIK, Lingodeer, 新标准韩语).
Ultimately, I’m hoping to use this dictionary as a basis to design some newbie learner resources.
The new neighborhood isn’t exactly suitable to the active lifestyle, with too many major roads full of cars and no easy access to parks or running trails. Nonetheless, some pretty serious pollution blew into Seoul, so I won’t be able to run for a few days anyways.
After a glorious nine hours of sleep, I was feeling somewhat human again, and puttered about the hostel for a few hours in the morning. There isn’t really a common area, just a single chaise lounge and table in the reception area. At least there is a water machine with hot water to make coffee. Since the hostel sucks to hang around, I’m itching to go out and about, but the pollution makes it difficult to do any real hiking or exploring.
However, this new location is close to the War Remembrance Museum, Hangul Museum, and National Museum (all of which I’ve been too before), but being free and indoors, it seemed like a good idea to revisit one. The irony of the plan was that I still spent more than half the day outside. First, there was the 25 minute walk to the museum, where I only spent about an hour looking at art before venturing outside to find food (another 20 minutes), then 20 minutes to a Starbucks I passed on the way down.
I was spoiled for choices in the block between the museum and the Han river, so it took a long time to decide on what I wanted. I found it strange that roughly half of the restaurants were Japanese, so I wonder if the neighborhood is known for that. I picked an udon place that was so popular I actually had to wait a minute outside to get a seat at the counter.
oishi fishi
I spent a good several hours in the Starbucks, which for the price of a cup of coffee is only right. It was really warm in the afternoon, both outside and in the Starbucks, and I realized at night that I was pretty seriously dehydrated.
After I couldn’t stand the Starbucks soundtrack any more, I briefly popped back into the hostel to shower and rest a bit before going out for dinner. I headed in a second direction finding the streets where I had met friends on previous trips to Korea.
The only dining option that stuck out to me was a dumpling place with clouds of steam billowing out the front window. A cursory glance at the outside posted window showed that it was cheap enough, and I supped on a basket of kimchi dumplings and a basket of meat dumplings. I’m definitely adjusting to life in Korea, where I’m not thinking paying 36 kuai for two baskets of steamed dumplings is reasonable, but I’m still reaching for the vinegar and being shocked to find its soy sauce.
I watched another episode of Iron Fist wishing there was more actual Chinese in a show set in Chinatown, and went down a rabbit hole on Instagram (I need to dedicate a post to this sometime) before wresting the phone out of my own hands and letting myself sleep.
As I reflect on my experiences learning Chinese (especially within the context of trying to cram Korean into my brain), I keep remembering new details to add.
So, I do consider myself self-taught, but that isn’t 100% true. I did have lessons with private tutors (though for only a single session and three sessions, respectively), and I did take a semester of Chinese lessons at Shenzhen university on my way out. I saw the first tutor because she was pretty, but she was a terrible teacher. The second was because I was prepping for the HSK 6 and wanted some targeted help on my writing. She bluntly told me I would never pass the HSK 6, so I dropped her and passed by a wide margin. I did prepare for the spoken portion by chugging a flask of erguotou.
I had finished a year of formally teaching at a international high school and while transitioning to “the next phase,” I enrolled at Shenda on a lark. After years of bumping into students studying formally and being amazed at how sucky their Chinese was, I wanted to get some first hand experience. I was placed into the highest level classes (“Business”), but dropped out after two weeks, not because it was too hard, but because it wasn’t the right learning environment. Firstly, the class was too small, the pacing too slow, 3 out of the 4 teachers had thick regional accents, and one of the teachers who also happened to be the dean constantly talked a bunch of BS about the CCP.
The “Advanced” class was a lot more lively and I got along with the teachers better. Again, I had access to a library full of textbooks, and worked heavily on those. So, the main take away was high-volume self study, working on pronunciation with some friends, and a bit of writing practice with homework.
Around that time, I “graduated” to my first literature in Chinese — a collection of short stories by 三毛. After leaving Shenzhen, I spent six months on the road, couch surfing and staying in hostels. At one point I picked up a martial arts novel by 金庸, but I never got into it. I had a textbook or two with me, and I recall spending hours going through a database of short news articles on my computer while training myself on word segmentation. [Chinese is written without spaces between words].
I stopped “studying” Chinese when I began my PhD at Beijing Language and Culture University, but I was attending graduate courses taught in Chinese and working my way through textbooks written in Chinese. I was proud and defensive of my Chinese level. I joined a speech competition at the university in my first year and was shocked to not win.
I had basically hit the pinnacle of what I could achieve in Shenzhen, and I was expecting Beijing to magically infuse me with a flawless accent. As I poured myself into written, academic Chinese, my spoken ability actually declined significantly. It probably didn’t help that my social circle in Beijing was mostly anglophone.
I started reading literature again, alternating between original works in Chinese and translations of world literature, including Norwegian Wood, Love in a Time of Cholera, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, 《三体》（全集），《复眼人》、《活着》、《酒国》、and some book about a code breaker whose name I cannot recall.
I am extremely fortunate to have been the 大师兄 at my research group and had a classmate who helped me edit a few conference papers. Though in the end, when it came to writing the beast of my dissertation, some sections got native speaker edits, but most of it was entirely on my own. The defense committee made noises about it not being perfectly written, but there wasn’t exactly anything I could do about that.
So, what’s next for my Chinese? I don’t have any interest in performing and 相声, singing competitions, or dating shows (though in my younger days, I may have fancied the attention). I would like to continue expanding my vocabulary, especially along the literary lines. The highest possible achievement I can envision would probably be to publish some poems or 随笔 (informal essays) in Chinese.
I had to get out of the hostel. I had stayed there for some 16 days, and while it was feeling like a family, that last day had been pretty painful with an unspoken rift. It was a good thing I had already made some plans to get a change of scenery. Of course, I still hung around until almost 2 pm since check-in wouldn’t be until 3.
Again, I had insomnia. It’s one thing to ignore a bit of snoring, shuffling around, or light talking, but when you know the voices, like a siren’s song, you get sucked in. Why so many people here are nocturnal escapes me. So with some two hours of sleep, I got out of bed around 6 or 7 and started pouring myself coffee. I didn’t even get the solace of sitting alone in the semi-darkened living room as another nocturnal person was binge watching Chinese dramas –with headphones, he isn’t the offender(s) I am obliquely referring to, although he eats instant ramen like a baboon.
At nine, the French guy was awake and we went out for one more run together. We did 11km and I felt like I could have kept going. I showered*, packed up, and hung out until I needed lunch. Went out and came back, just ticking down the moments until leaving. At the appointed hour, I said my goodbyes and set off to a bus stop, cutting through some interesting neighborhoods which would have been worth exploring.
I moved to Itaewon, which is sort of the foreign ghetto of Seoul. It’s famous for its markets and international cuisine, but the area has housed many a refugee and immigrant. Itaewon is also just next to a major US military base. The new hostel purports to be a boutique guesthouse and from the wall art I can see how in the distant past in the summer time, it could have been a vibrant place. But its super grungy like a post-apocalyptic Chungking Mansion. As I was paying for my week, I had some momentary doubts about really staying there for so long. Well, if anything, it will encourage me to spend more time outside.
Needing some sort of human contact, I added another “social networking” app to the phone and put in some time on that until I was starving. I wondered out into the neighborhood to scrounge up some food, doing a whole loop before picking an authentic Mexican restaurant. It was so good. I might be eating a lot of non-Korean food the next few nights.
Back at the hostel, despite sharing a room with five guys, we all implicitly accepted the rule of silence, each person keeping to himself. I chatted with a few people on my phone, started season 2 of Iron Fist and almost caught myself falling asleep in the last few minutes. Grungy… seedy… dirty, whatever. I got nine hours of uninterrupted sleep. Très magnifique!
*a funny side note on the shower: I went upstairs to shower in the bathroom with two sinks and two shower stalls, so its not exactly a private bathroom. During the middle of my shower, two people come in and decide to share the other shower well aware that I (or at least someone) is literally inches away. They were just chatting as far as I could tell.
Much like the commonalities of dumplings across east Asia, ramen presents an interesting case for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison. Let’s begin with the word and then talk about the actual food item. As pictured above on the lantern, “ramen” is written with the Japanese kitakana script, which suggests–despite its entry into English from the Japanese–that it is in itself a loan word. The beauty of blogging is that I can posit wild speculations without actually doing any research to verify this.
So, Korean uses a similar word as fitted to its phonetic system: 라면 (ra myeon). We should remember from the post on zhajiang mian that “myeon” is a functional morpheme in Korean for noodles and related to the Chinese character 面.
In China, ramen is rendered 拉面 (la1mian4), but this word is better translated as hand-pulled noodles and is most associated with the northwestern (read: Muslim) parts of China. Most notably, 拉面 pretty much also refers to freshly made noodles, while the instant packs are called either 方便面 (fang1bian4 mian4, “convenient noodles”) or 泡面 (pao4 mian4, “soaked noodles”).
So this is the key difference. We tend to associate “ramen noodles” as cheap stuff college students live on, while there is really a major difference between that kind of ramen (inspired by pulled noodles) and the real pulled noodles. To the best of my knowledge, in Japan ramen refers exclusively to fresh noodles (though the real star is the soup stock with every region of Japan claiming to make the best kind), while China uses different words, and in Korea, ramyeon either refers to the instant noodles or the kind served at a Japanese restaurant.
