Sorry for necro'ing. One thing that I'd like to point out is that contrary to popular belief, ramen is actually not defined by the presence of alkalinity or kansui. Recently this kind of perceived boundary has explicitly been challenged by the shop Nara-seimen in Shinjuku, but historically there have also been existence of shops like Ginmentei which also do not use kansui, that have been considered to be top ramen shops in their time. There is a category of noodle called "chuka-men" (中華麺) that ramen has historically been associated with, but you can think of it basically as just one type of noodles that ramen can use.
(Also to be a little bit more pedantic, ramen as in "rāmen" or ラーメン is not lamian, and has no historical continuity beyond the name. The theory that I like the most is that it's almost directly descended from or a sibling to noodle soups in Guangdong and Hong Kong, like wonton noodles.)
