Biang Biang Breakout

[liuzhou]

For a long time after biang biang mian appeared on the streets of China’s ancient city of Xi’an in the early 2000s, signs or menus utilising the name were all hand painted. It appeared in no dictionaries and was impossible to enter as a computer character.

 

However the dish was far from new. I ate it often when I lived in Xi’an in the 1990s, yet never saw that name. It was 油泼扯面 (yóu pō chě miàn), literally ‘oil-splashed torn noodles’ and very popular. Some restaurants in Xi'an today sell 油泼扯面 to the locals and Biang Biang noodles to the tourists at a higher price!

 

Today the character used to describe them is more famous than the actual dish. It is said to be the most complex character in Chinese, made up of 42 separate strokes in the most widely accepted version. The character is said to be onomatopoetic, ‘biang’ resembling the sound of the smack of the dough hitting the table when they are being stretched. 面 (miàn) means wheat noodles.

 

The trouble is the biang character is a new and unofficial invention. Its origin is murky, with a cited notion that it was invented in the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC) having been long debunked. There is no record of it before the 2000s. The most likely and accepted story is that it was invented as a marketing tool by one of Xi’an’s more imaginative noodle shop owners (although no one agrees which one). There is another story believed by some that it was invented by a local university student as a way to pay for a meal he could otherwise ill afford. Again, which university, and Xi’an has several, is never identified.

 

It took until March 2000 for the character to be added to Unicode in version 13.00, but that version has still not been adopted into all platforms or fonts. However, it is now here on eG.

 

𰻝𰻝面 (biáng biáng miàn)

 

Rather idiotically in my view, some clown has gone on to develop a Traditional Chinese version, 𰻞𰻞麵.

(‘Traditional’ Chinese). However, the size can't be altered in the trad font. hmmm.

 

Apart from the question as to how can anyone invent a new ‘traditional’ anything, Traditional Chinese is very rarely used in mainland China where the dish’s new name concept was invented.

 

Also, others have sought to ‘improve’, on the original by adding even more strokes, with versions including up to 70 strokes. I have only given the most accepted version (and the ‘traditional’ one for its very slight amusement value).

 

Here is my local biang biang shop. As you can see they couldn’t write biang biang other than in Roman letters The shop name 忆长安 biangbiang 面 means Remembering Chang’an Biangbiang Noodles, Chang’an being the ancient name of  Xi’an, in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) the largest and richest city in the world.

 

And their noodles.

 

 

PS. The character 𰻝 still appears in no Chinese dictionaries.

 

 

 

 

Edited 10 hours ago by liuzhou (log)