Biángbiáng noodles

Biángbiáng noodles
Biang biang noodles
Traditional Chinese 麵
Simplified Chinese 面

Biáng biáng noodles, also known as Chinese: 油泼扯面; pinyin: yóupō chěmiàn, are a type of noodle popular in China's Shaanxi province. The noodles, touted as one of the "ten strange wonders of Shaanxi" (Chinese: 陝西十大怪), are described as being like a belt, due to their thickness and length. The "Noodle King" chain in Beijing (Chinese: 面北京连锁店) serves biáng biáng noodles.

Contents

About the noodle

The noodle is broad and hand-made and is topped with lots of red hot peppers for the cold winter in Shaanxi.

This noodle was a poor-man's meal in the countryside, but has recently become popular in trendy restaurants due to its weird character name.

The Chinese character for biáng

Phonetic substitution

Made up of 57 strokes, the Chinese character for "biáng" is one of the most complex Chinese characters in contemporary usage, although the character is not found in modern dictionaries or even in the Kangxi dictionary.

The character is composed of 言 (speak) in the middle flanked by 幺 (tiny) on both sides. Below it, 馬 (horse) is similarly flanked by 長 (grow). This central block itself is surrounded by 月 (moon) to the left, 心 (heart) below, 刂 (knife) on the right, and 八 (eight) above. These in turn are surrounded by a second layer of characters, namely 宀 (roof) on the top and 辶 (walk) curving around the left and bottom.

Because the Chinese character for "biáng" cannot be entered into computers (the character has not been added to Unicode), phonetic substitutes like Chinese: 彪彪面; pinyin: biāo biāo miàn) or Chinese: 冰冰面; pinyin: bīng bīng miàn) are often used.

Mnemonics

There are a number of mnemonics used by Shaanxi residents to aid recall of how the character is written.

One version runs as follows:

Trad.
Chinese		 Simp.
Chinese		 Pinyin English translation
一點上了天 一点上了天 yì diǎn shàng le tiān A dot rises up to heaven,
黃河兩道彎 黄河两道弯 huáng hé liǎng dào wān and the yellow river has two bends.
八字大張口 八字大张口 bā zì dà zhāng kǒu The character "eight" (八) opens its mouth,
言字往進走 言字往进走 yán zì wǎng jìn zǒu and the character "speak" (言) walks in.
你一扭 我一扭 你一扭 我一扭 nǐ yī niǔ, wǒ yī niǔ You make a twist, I make a twist, (幺 'tiny')
你一長 我一長 你一长 我一长 nǐ yī zhǎng, wǒ yī zhǎng you grow, I grow (長),
當中加個馬大王 当中加个马大王 dāng zhōng jiā ge mǎ dà wáng and we add a horse (馬) king in between.
心字底 心字底 xīn zì dǐ The character "heart" (心) forms the base,
月字旁 月字旁 yuè zì páng the character "moon" (月) stands at the side,
留個釣搭掛麻糖 留个钓搭挂麻糖 liú ge diào dā guà má táng a hook (刂 'knife') at the right to hang sesame candies,
坐著車車逛咸陽 坐着车车逛咸阳 zuò zhe chē chē guàng xián yáng and we ride a carriage to tour ( radical: 辶 'walk') the streets of Xianyang.

Note that the first two lines probably refer to the character 宀 (roof), building it up systematically as a dot and a line (river) with two bends.

Origin of the character

The origins of the biang biang noodles and the character biáng are unclear. In one version of the story, the character biáng was invented by the Qin Dynasty Premier Li Si. However, since the character is not found in the Kangxi Dictionary, it may have been created much later than the time of Li Si.

In the 2007 season of the TVB show The Web (Chinese: 一網打盡), the show's producers tried to find the origin of the character by contacting university professors, but they could not verify the Li Si story or the origin of the character. It was concluded that the character was invented by the noodle store.

One theory is that there was no such character or meaning for this word in the beginning, and the word actually came from the sound people make from chewing such delicious noodles "biang biang biang".

References

External links