origin of "archetypical-Asian" melody

There is a short melodic phrase, (riff?) consisting of around 9 notes that is commonly heard in soundtracks when an Asian theme is introduced. The phrase I mean can be heard in Turning Japanese. This link is to Amazon’s samples, and I find it about 11 seconds into the Windows Media Player version.

What is the origin of this phrase?

There have been a number of thread on this, and so far, the very first appearance of that specific melody has been found in the intro to Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” (1974).

see this thread