Biangbiang noodles

Biangbiang noodles
Type Chinese noodles
Place of origin China
Region or state Shaanxi
Biangbiang noodles
Traditional Chinese 麵
Simplified Chinese 面
Hanyu Pinyin biángbiáng miàn
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 油潑扯麵
Simplified Chinese 油泼扯面
Hanyu Pinyin yóu pō chě miàn

Biangbiang noodles, alternatively known as you po che mian in Chinese, are a type of noodles popular in the cuisine of China's Shaanxi Province. The noodles, touted as one of the "eight strange wonders of Shaanxi" (陕西八大怪), are described as being like a belt, owing to their thickness and length.

The noodle is broad and hand-made. It was originally part of a poor man's meal in the countryside, but has recently become renowned due to the unique character used in its name.[1]

Dishes with this noodle are often topped with lots of red hot peppers for the cold winter in Shaanxi.

Chinese character for biáng

The character for biáng in calligraphic regular script
The character for biáng in a Song font
The simplified character for biáng in a Song font
American singer and TV personality in China Slater Rhea (帅德) writes and explains a "biáng" character on Xi'an TV.

Made up of 58 strokes in its traditional form[Note 1] (43 in simplified Chinese), the Chinese character for "biáng" is one of the most complex Chinese characters in contemporary usage,[2] although the character is not found in modern dictionaries or even in the Kangxi dictionary.

The character is composed of 言 (speak; 7 strokes) in the middle flanked by 幺 (tiny; 2×3 strokes) on both sides. Below it, 馬 (horse; 10 strokes) is similarly flanked by 長 (grow; 2×8 strokes). This central block itself is surrounded by 月 (moon; 4 strokes) to the left, 心 (heart; 4 strokes) below, and刂 (knife; 2 strokes) to the right. These in turn are surrounded by a second layer of characters, namely 穴 (cave; 5 strokes) on the top and 辶 (walk; 4 strokes[Note 1]) curving around the left and bottom.

Phonetic substitution

Neither the traditional nor the simplified Chinese characters for "biáng" are yet encoded in Unicode, so there is no standardized way of entering or representing them on computers. However, both traditional and simplified forms have been submitted to the Ideographic Rapporteur Group for inclusion in CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G.[3] As the characters are not yet encoded, phonetic substitutes like 彪彪面 (biāobiāomiàn) or 冰冰面 (bīngbīngmiàn) are often used instead.

The character is described by the following ideographic description sequences (IDSs):[4]

⿺‌辶⿳穴⿰月⿰⿲⿱幺長⿱言馬⿱幺長刂心 (traditional)
⿺‌辶⿳穴⿰月⿰⿲⿱幺长⿱言马⿱幺长刂心 (simplified)

In Adobe’s Source Han Serif font these IDS sequences do not display as IDS sequences, but display the actual glyphs for the character.[5]

Unicode

The character has yet to be added to Unicode, but the traditional and simplified forms are being considered by the IRG for inclusion in CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G.[3][4]. As of July 2018, that character, along with the rest of Extention G, are tentatively scheduled to be included in the 6th edition of ISO/IEC 10646, corresponding to Unicode 13.0.[6][7]

Mnemonics

Animated GIF showing the stroke order of biáng according to the mnemonic

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

One version runs as follows:

Traditional
Chinese		Simplified
Chinese		PinyinEnglish translation
一點上了天一点上了天Yīdiǎn shàngle tiānApex rising up to the sky,
黃河兩道彎黄河两道弯Huáng Hé liǎng dào wānOver Two bends by Yellow River's side.
八字大張口八字大张口Bāzì dà zhāngkǒuCharacter "Eight"'s (八) opening wide,
言字往進走言字往进走Yán zì wǎng jìn zǒu"Speech" (言) enters inside.
你一扭 我一扭你一扭 我一扭Nǐ yī niǔ, wǒ yī niǔYou twist, I twist too, (幺 'tiny')
你一長 我一長你一长 我一长Nǐ yī zhǎng, wǒ yī zhǎngyou grow, I grow (長) with you,
當中加個馬大王当中加个马大王Dāngzhōng jiā gè mǎ dàwángInside, a horse (馬) king will rule.
心字底心字底Xīn zì dǐ"Heart" (心) down below,
月字旁月字旁Yuè zì páng"Moon" (月) by the side,
留個釣搭掛麻糖留个钓搭挂麻糖Liú ge diào dā guà má tangLeave a hook (刂 'knife') for Matang (Mahua, Fried Dough Twist) to hang low,
坐著車車逛咸陽坐着车车逛咸阳Zuòzhe chēchē guàng XiányángOn our carriage, to Xianyang we'll ride (radical: 辶 'walk').

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

Origin of the character

Restaurant specializing in Biang Biang noodles
BiangBiang restaurant.
A Xi'an biang biang mian restaurant

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. Similar characters were found used by Tiandihui.

In the 2007 season of the TVB show The Web (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 a noodle shop.

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 the noodles, "biang biang biang".

A legend about a student fabricating a character for the noodle to get out of a biang biang noodle bill also is a commonly believed theory about the origin of the character.[8]

According to an article on China Daily, the word "biang" actually refers to the sound made by the chef when he creates the noodles by pulling the dough and slapping it on the table.[9]

Notes

  1. 1 2 The radical 辶 has only three strokes instead of four according to Mainland Chinese rules, so the traditional character is written with only 57 strokes there. This is reflected in the graphics of the Song style character and the stroke order animation to the right.

References

  1. ↑ "A taste of Xi'an in North London". Fuchsia Dunlop. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  2. ↑ "What is the Most Complex Chinese Character?". Mental Floss. Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  3. 1 2 UTC Character Submission for 2015 by the Unicode Consortium
  4. 1 2 See Unicode Technical Report #45 and associated data File, UTC-00791. The file references this Wikipedia article as a primary source and a reason for inclusion.
  5. ↑ Lunde, Ken (April 8, 2017), "Designing & Implementing Biáng", CJK Type Blog, Adobe, retrieved December 30, 2017
  6. ↑ "Additional repertoire for ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (6th ed.) CD" (PDF). Retrieved 29 August 2018.
  7. ↑ Lunde, Ken (5 June 2018). "Unicode Version 11.0". CJK Type Blog. Retrieved 29 August 2018.
  8. ↑ Beck, Stewart Lee. "The Hardest Chinese Character". Retrieved 2016-06-14.
  9. ↑ "Biangbiang Shaanxi street food". China Daily. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
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