In 1991 Yin-Heng Wei, a Taiwanese businessman who had been trying without much success to establish a food business in China, was making a long trip by train to Beijing. When he opened the package of instant noodles that he had brought from Taiwan, their aroma attracted the attention of his fellow passengers. Mr Wei shared out the noodles among them, and their enthusiastic reaction alerted him to an important fact: there was a big gap between the low-quality, poorly packaged noodles turned out by hundreds ofsmall Chinese producers and the top-of-the-range imported noodles that were priced too high for the average consumer.

When Mr Wei returned home, he and his brothers quickly worked out a plan for making good quality noodles at affordable prices, and adapted an existing Chinese factory for this purpose. The new products were launched with a massive television advertising campaign under the Master Kong brand. By the end of 1994 the Wei family company, Ting Hsin, was selling more than 3m packets of noodles a day.