The first noodles in China were called tang bing, or soup bread. In a climate that favored cereal crops, bread and then noodle-making flourished fast in ancient China. Large-scale commercial production was already well under way by 100 A.D., following the introduction, probably thanks to trade with the Middle East, of wheat milling technology--a concept that adapted easily to whatever crop was available: wheat, millet, rice, barley, mung bean, egg or soy. By the Nara period (710-794 A.D.), the Japanese word menrui appears, an adaptation of the Chinese mian, which found its way to the Nippon archipelago via imperial envoys sent to the Tang court in the hopes of absorbing Han culture. The first noodles in Japan were wheat udon and buckwheat soba. Only after World War II did the cult of ramen take off.