Biangbiang noodles

Biangbiang noodles(simplified Chinese:𰻝𰻝面;traditional Chinese:𰻞𰻞麵;pinyin:Biángbiángmiàn), alternatively known asyoupo chemian(simplified Chinese:油泼扯面;traditional Chinese:油潑扯麵) in Chinese, are a type ofChinese noodleoriginating fromShaanxi cuisine. The noodles, touted as one of the "eight curiosities" of Shaanxi (陕西八大怪),are described as being like a belt, owing to their thickness and length.
Biangbiang noodles are renowned for being written using a uniquecharacter.The character is unusually complex, with the standard variant of its traditional form containing 58 strokes.
The noodles are thick and belt-like, and are usually hand-made. For most of their existence, they have been an obscure dish local toXi'an, eaten by workers lacking the time to make thinner noodles. More recently, the noodles have become more widely known across China, in a rise driven to some extent by social media interest in the esoteric character used to writebiáng.
The wordbiángisonomatopoeic, being said to resemble the sound of the thick noodle dough hitting a work surface.
There are many variations of thecharacterforbiáng, but the most widely accepted version is made up of 58 strokes in its traditional form(42 in simplified Chinese). It is one of the mostcomplex Chinese charactersin modern usage,although it is not found in modern dictionaries or even in theKangxi 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) curving around the left and bottom.
Both thetraditionalandsimplifiedChinese characters forbiángwere encoded inUnicode, on 20 March 2020, for Unicode 13.0.0. The code point is U+30EDE for the traditional form (𰻞) and U+30EDD for the simplified form (𰻝).
Until that point, there were no standardized ways of entering or representing them on computers. Both traditional and simplified forms had been submitted to theIdeographic Rapporteur Groupfor inclusion inCJK Unified Ideographs Extension G.As the characters are not widely available on computers (and not supported by many fonts), images of the characters, phonetic substitutes like彪彪面(biāobiāomiàn) or冰冰面(bīngbīng miàn), as well as the pinyin, are often used instead.
The character is described by the followingideographic description sequences(IDSs):
⿺‌辶⿱穴⿱⿲月⿱⿲幺言幺⿲長馬長刂心(traditional)⿺‌辶⿱穴⿱⿲月⿱⿲幺言幺⿲长马长刂心(simplified)
In Adobe'sSource Han Sans(prior to 2.002) andSource Han Seriffont these IDS sequences do not display as IDS sequences, but display the actual glyphs for the character.
After an email discussion with Lee Collins, John Jenkins submitted an application of "" in 2006.However, itsIDSwas too long at the timeand "radical 心 (heart)" is missing from the character shape.
Ming Fan (范銘)submitted an application to theUnicode Consortium. At WS 2015, the traditional character had a code of UTC-00791 and the code of its simplified character is UTC-01312.
However, the evidence for this character does not fully match the character shape. For UTC-00791, "radical 刂 (knife)" has disappeared from the dictionary (which is used as evidence).For UTC-01312, "radical 刂 (knife)" has become "radical 戈 (dagger-axe)" in the academic paper used as evidence.Members of the Unicode Consortium supported the character shape.In a possibleApril fools' joke, Toshiya Suzuki suggested adding a new block ("CJK Complex Ideographic Symbols"), setting "" as a basic shape, unifying the variation and even admitting "" as a variant of the character.
The character's traditional and simplified forms were added toUnicodeversion 13.0 in March 2020 in theCJK Unified Ideographs Extension Gblock of the newly allocatedTertiary Ideographic Plane.The corresponding Unicode characters are:
There are a number ofmnemonicsused byShaanxiresidents to aid recall of how the character is written.
One version runs as follows:
The origins of the biangbiang noodles and the characterbiángare unclear. In one version of the story, the characterbiángwas invented by theQin dynastyPremierLi Si. However, since the character is not found in theKangxi Dictionary, it may have been created much later than the time of Li Si. Similar characters were found used byTiandihui.
In the 2007 season of theTVBshowThe 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.
A legend about a student fabricating a character for the noodle to get out of a biangbiang noodle bill also is a commonly believed hypothesis about the origin of the character.
According to aChina Dailyarticle, the word "biang" is anonomatopoeiathat actually refers to the sound made by the chef when he creates the noodles by pulling the dough and slapping it on the table.
More than twenty variants of the Traditional character forbiáng, having between 56 and 70strokes: