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Biangbiang noodles ( zh, s=, t=, p=Biángbiángmiàn), alternatively known as ''youpo chemian'' ( zh, s=油泼扯面, t=油潑扯麵) 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 in Chinese cuisine. They are an important part ...
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 ingredients and is characterized by its noodles, lamb ...
. 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. 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 Xi'an is the list of capitals in China, capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong plain, the city is the third-most populous city in Western China after Chongqing and Chengdu, as well as the most populou ...
, 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 (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...
, 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 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 ''Kangxi Dictionary'' () is a Chinese dictionary published in 1716 during the High Qing, considered from the time of its publishing until the early 20th century to be the most authoritative reference for written Chinese characters. Wanting ...
. 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 system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examp ...
and simplified Chinese characters for ''biáng'' were encoded in
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
, 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 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 JTC1 Subcommittee 2 (SC2), which is the committee responsible for developing the Universal Coded Character Se ...
for inclusion in
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G __FORCETOC__ CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G is a Unicode block containing rare and historic CJK Unified Ideographs for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese which were submitted to the Ideographic Research Group during 2015. It is the firs ...
.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 Several systems have been proposed for describing the internal structure of Chinese characters, including their strokes, components, and the stroke order, and the location of each in the character's ideal square. This information is useful for ide ...
(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 Source Han Sans is a sans-serif East Asian gothic typeface, gothic typeface family created by Adobe Inc., Adobe and Google. It is also released by Google under the Noto fonts project as Noto Sans CJK. The family includes seven weights, and suppo ...
(prior to 2.002) and
Source Han Serif Source Han Serif (also known as Noto Serif CJK) is a serif Ming (typefaces), Song/Ming typeface created by Adobe Systems, Adobe and Google. Design Latin-script letters and numerals are from the Source Serif font. Changzhou SinoType Co., Ltd., ...
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 d ...
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 The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California, U.S. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the in ...
. 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 Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
version 13.0 in March 2020 in the
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G __FORCETOC__ CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G is a Unicode block containing rare and historic CJK Unified Ideographs for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese which were submitted to the Ideographic Research Group during 2015. It is the firs ...
block of the newly allocated
Tertiary Ideographic Plane In the Unicode standard, a plane is a contiguous 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 hexadecimal ...
. The corresponding Unicode characters are: *Traditional: U+30EDE 𰻞 *Simplified: U+30EDD 𰻝


Mnemonics

There are a number of
mnemonic A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of e ...
s used by
Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...
residents to aid recall of how the character is written. One version runs as follows:


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 The Qin dynasty ( ) was the first Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China. It is named for its progenitor state of Qin, a fief of the confederal Zhou dynasty (256 BC). Beginning in 230 BC, the Qin under King Ying Zheng enga ...
Premier
Li Si Li Si (; 208 BC) was a Chinese calligrapher, philosopher, and politician of the Qin dynasty. He served as Chancellor from 246 to 208 BC, first under King Zheng of the state of Qin—who later became Qin Shi Huang, the "First Emperor" o ...
. However, since the character is not found in the ''
Kangxi Dictionary The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' () is a Chinese dictionary published in 1716 during the High Qing, considered from the time of its publishing until the early 20th century to be the most authoritative reference for written Chinese characters. Wanting ...
'', it may have been created much later than the time of Li Si. Similar characters were found used by
Tiandihui The Tiandihui, the Heaven and Earth Society, also called Hongmen (the Vast Family), is a Chinese fraternal organization and historically a secretive folk religious sect in the vein of the Ming loyalist White Lotus Sect, the Tiandihu ...
. In the 2007 season of the
TVB Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB; zh, t=電視廣播有限公司) is a television broadcasting company based in Hong Kong. The company operates five free-to-air terrestrial television channels in Hong Kong, with TVB Jade as its main Canton ...
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. 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 ''China Daily'' ( zh, s=中国日报, p=Zhōngguó Rìbào) is an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Overview ''China Daily'' has the widest print circulation of any ...
'' article, the word "biang" is an
onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...
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 Chinese characters Shaanxi cuisine