About the origin of Champon
=Information provided by contributors=
Korea origin thesis Japan origing thesis
I wanted to comment on your information on "Champon" noodles. The name Champon is actually "Cham-pong" and it's originally from Korea. I believe it was adopted in Nagasaki much like the way "kimchi" is popular there.
In Korea, we eat Cham-pong in Korean-Chinese noodle shops (much like Ramen has a Chinese origin in Japan). But the flavor we know of Cham-pong matured in Korea. I really encourage you to try Cham-pong in a Korean-Chinese restaurant. (It's actually quite different from Japanese ramen, though. Cham-pong has noodles like udon but thinner. It has a seafood broth that a little spicy and rich.)
(Posted by Woo, 2001.9.22)		 Chanpon's history is very clear; it was created by a chinese cook who lived in Nagasaki-city. The cook, Chen-Pingshun, who came to Nagasaki in 1892 at the age of 19, has worked diligently to be an owner of a chinese restaurant "Su-hai-rou(in chinese, or Shikairou in japanese, meaning palace with four seas around)" in 1899, and he has hosted many chinese students there.
The cheap but healthy & piled menu for those students, "China-noodle", was started there and evolved as Chanpon by chinese food shop in Nagasaki till after the WW2, and was brought out by fast-food chain. As the supporting evidence, there is Chinese noodle called "rou-si-tang-mian" in Fujian province, the cook's birthplace.
The origin of the name "Chanpon" is not clear, it is said to come from "jiabong (to eat some dish)" or from Nagasaki's slang.
I'm sorry that there's only japanese site available for the history of Chanpon, but the url is as follows:
Click!

It is a report about Chanpon museum, with many relating items and the descendants of founder Chen, and all the informations obove is from here.

It is also introduced as "rearrangement from Chinese dishes" in Nagasaki-city's site-seeing guide:
http://211.6.82.163/en/guide/product.html

The same goes for Saraudon, except that it is unclear who has created it; it seems that the timeline is similar, but Saraudon seems to come out in last period of Edo (around 1850), so it is a bit faster.
(Posted by Hideo, 2002.5.24)
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