Behold the Power of His Noodly Appendage!

Today, friends, we're talking about food. Glorious food! Etc. and so forth. Specifically, a beef noodle soup from China:

Man, now I'm hungry. At any rate, this is the kind of regional dish that has the benefit of being both satisfying and cheap, making it ideal for folks with few resources. Recently, it's also become a symbol of a bigger program taking shape in China.

Government officials in Gansu province have announced a plan to teach 15,000 impoverish people how to make the hand-stretched noodles used in the dish from scratch. The idea is that those people will then be able to take those skills to get work in existing noodle shops (of which there are 4,000 in Gansu province alone) or take the next step of opening their own noodle shop.

It's a strong sign of optimism and belief in their people that the government is putting such a program in place, as it indicates a willingness to give people tools to help them live better lives. There are other programs in place or being proposed as well, including driving tourism to more impoverished provinces and opening villages to film and TV studios for filming.

Poverty isn't an easy problem to solve, and to believe otherwise is to oversimplify the factors involved. However, giving people new skills that they can use to help improve their station is never a bad thing. And besides, who can say no to a good bowl of noodle soup?

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