Biángbiáng noodles
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Biangbiang noodles ( zh, s=, t=𰻞𰻞麵, p=Biángbiángmiàn), alternatively known as ''youpo chemian'' () in Chinese, are a type of
Chinese noodle Chinese noodles vary widely according to the region of production, ingredients, shape or width, and manner of preparation. Noodles were invented in China, and are an essential ingredient and Staple food, staple in Chinese cuisine. They are an im ...
originating from
Shaanxi cuisine Shaanxi cuisine, or Qin cuisine, is derived from the native cooking styles of Shaanxi Province and parts of northwestern China. Description Shaanxi cuisine makes elaborate use of ordinary materials, and is best known for its noodles and lamb/mu ...
. The noodles, touted as one of the "eight curiosities" of Shaanxi (), are described as being like a belt, owing to their thickness and length. Biangbiang noodles are renowned for being written using a unique
character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
. The character is unusually complex, with the standard variant of its traditional form containing 58 strokes.


Noodles

The noodles are thick and belt-like, and are usually hand-made. For most of their existence, they have been an obscure dish local to Xi'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 write ''biáng''. The word ''biáng'' is
onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
, being said to resemble the sound of the thick noodle dough hitting a work surface.


Chinese character for ''biáng''

There are many variations of the
character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
for ''biáng'', 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 most complex Chinese characters in modern usage, although it is not found in modern dictionaries or even in the Kangxi dictionary. The character is composed of (speak; 7 strokes) in the middle flanked by (tiny; 2 × 3 strokes) on both sides. Below it, (horse; 10 strokes) is similarly flanked by (grow; 2 × 8 strokes). This central block itself is surrounded by (moon; 4 strokes) to the left, (heart; 4 strokes) below, and (knife; 2 strokes) to the right. These in turn are surrounded by a second layer of characters, namely (cave; 5 strokes) on the top and (walk; 4 strokes) curving around the left and bottom.


Computer entry and phonetic substitution

Both the
traditional A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
and simplified Chinese characters for ''biáng'' were encoded in Unicode, on March 20, 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 the
Ideographic Rapporteur Group The Ideographic Research Group (IRG), formerly called the Ideographic Rapporteur Group, is a subgroup of Working Group 2 (WG2) of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 (SC 2), the subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee of ISO and IEC which is responsible for d ...
for inclusion in
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G is a Unicode block containing rare and historic CJK Unified Ideographs for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. It is the first block to be allocated to the Tertiary Ideographic Plane. The exotic characte ...
.UTC Character Submission for 2015
by the Unicode Consortium
As the characters are not widely available on computers (and not supported by many fonts), images of the characters, phonetic substitutes like () or (), as well as the pinyin, are often used instead. The character is described by the following
ideographic description sequences The Chinese character description languages are several proposed languages to most accurately and completely describe Chinese (or CJK) characters and information such as their list of components, list of strokes (basic and complex), their order, a ...
(IDSs):Se
Unicode Technical Report #45
an
associated data File
UTC-00791. The file references this Wikipedia article as a primary source and a reason for inclusion.
(traditional)
(simplified) In Adobe's Source Han Sans (prior to 2.002) and Source Han Serif font these IDS sequences do not display as IDS sequences, but display the actual glyphs for the character.


Unicode

After an email discussion with Lee Collins, John Jenkins submitted an application of "" in 2006. However, its
IDS IDS may refer to: Computing * IBM Informix Dynamic Server, a relational database management system * Ideographic Description Sequence, describing a Unihan character as a combination of other characters * Integrated Data Store, one of the first da ...
was too long at the time and "radical 心 (heart)" is missing from the character shape. Ming Fan () submitted an application to the Unicode 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 possible April 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 to Unicode version 13.0 in March 2020 in the
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G is a Unicode block containing rare and historic CJK Unified Ideographs for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. It is the first block to be allocated to the Tertiary Ideographic Plane. The exotic characte ...
block of the newly allocated
Tertiary Ideographic Plane In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecima ...
. The corresponding Unicode characters are: *Traditional: U+30EDE 𰻞 *Simplified: U+30EDD 𰻝


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


Origin of the character

The origins of the biangbiang 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'' (), 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 hypothesis 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 biangbiang noodle bill also is a commonly believed hypothesis about the origin of the character. According to a '' China Daily'' article, the word "biang" is an onomatopoeia that actually refers to the sound made by the chef when he creates the noodles by pulling the dough and slapping it on the table.


Variants

More than twenty variants of the Traditional character for ''biáng'', having between 56 and 70 strokes:


See also

*
Taito (kanji) Taito, daito, or otodo (𱁬/) is a ''kokuji'' ("kanji character invented in Japan") written with 84 strokes, and thus the most graphically complex CJK character—collectively referring to Chinese characters and derivatives used in the writte ...


Notes


References


External links

*
CCTV Forum Discussion on ''biáng'' Character
*
CCTV writeup on the ten strange wonders of Shaanxi
* Pictures of Chinese signs with ''biáng'' character

{{Shaanxi topics Chinese noodles Shaanxi cuisine Chinese characters