Mee goreng (fried noodles), the next dish on the syllabus, illustrates the city's food heritage perfectly.

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Long lines of people waited by stalls selling Namie yakisoba, the popular local dish of fried noodles that has become a symbol of the town's battle to survive.

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Fortunately four to five meals per day of char kwey tiaw (fried noodles in soy sauce with egg and various additions), asam laksa (Penang's famous, indescribably good curry noodle soup), rojak (fruit and veggie salad in a sweet dark shrimp paste) and much, much more, goes down a lot easier than heavier Western foods.

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Peranakan-style black fatty pork... meat-stuffed cabbage... beef curry... fried yellow noodles... pork and rice sausages...

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We've made stuffed blue crabs with pork, fried Jonah crab claws and spicy crab noodles with king or Dungeness crab.

WSJ: Endless-Summer Baked Blue Crab

The air is filled with the calls of the stallholders offering everything from the ubiquitous noodles to spicy Sichuan soup and Shangdong-style pancakes, deep-fried crickets and scorpions.

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