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How a Word Saved a Food in the Past

And almost kills it now

By Bond WangPublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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A Biangbiang noodle restaurant in modern Xi’an (Source: Wikimeida Commens)

Thousands of years ago, Xi’an was the capital of ancient China. Every year, students and scholars across the country traveled to Xi’an to attend the Imperial Exam. Once passed, they would get a job serving the emperor and move into the higher class.

A word invented for a dish

Many visiting scholars fell in love with Xi’an’s food. One year, a scholar was obsessed with a special kind of noodle: the thick, dry strings were covered with chili powder. A ladleful of chili oil was heated near to the burning point before spattered on the top of the noodle. The bowl turned red, the noodle glossy, the chewing rough.

By Pui Bear on Unsplash

In a city that favored the soup noodle, this stiff, blunt, yet tasteful noodle had a special appeal for the scholar.

He also noticed that the restaurants selling this kind of noodle all had the same flag signs –“面”. It was only a plain word, “noodle,” no indication of its flavor or craft. He made an investigation. Some owners told him that the noodle had a verbal name for a long time. It was called “biang~biang~”, a simple sound. When pulling the dough rod, the chef swung it up and down to make sure it was evenly stretched. Sometimes it hit hard at the wood board in the front — Biang! Biang!

By Aditya Romansa on Unsplash

It was not only a showcase but also an important recipe. If the string was not strong enough and broke, it should go back to the doughs for recycling. Plus, the resilient noodle sent a rough, chewy sensation that no other noodles in the town could provide. Pulling was everything — Biang! Biang!

The sound was their brand. Only they didn’t know how to make it in writing unless they knew alphabets back then. — Biang! Biang!

A successful brand

The scholar offered to help with the written name. He decided it must be very special that it would catch people’s eyes right away. Plus, it should be hard to steal the design. An effective tactic would be, at that time, a complicated word, or graphic. Chinese words were all graph-based.

For a graphic character, the more strokes it had to write down, the less likely it could be used elsewhere. A typical Chinese character had about 10 strokes on average back to that time. When he finally made the character, it had 56 strokes. He put them together in a good structure, the restaurant owners all liked it!

The Chinese word “biang”. (Source: Wikimeida Commens)

In tradition, Chinese people tended to call a sound in a repetitive mode. They wouldn’t say “biang,” for example, instead they would go with a double-tone, “biangbiang.” So when they wrote down the name on the signs, it got 112 strokes. — Biang! Biang!

The new name quickly flew up to the restaurants' signs. Before that, the noodle toiled hard in business with its weird verbal name and abrasive appearance. The brand-new signs generated a lot of curiosity among the travelers. They stepped in to check out, only found the noodle was incredibly delicious. The business started to take off.

Today, “biangbiang” noodle stays as one of the major noodle flavors in Xi’an. It’s hard to imagine whether it could survive thousands of years ago without the special written name.

The success story continued. A couple of years after the invention, the National Library included the word “biang” in its dictionary. The scholar’s name remains unknown until this day. But he received the best award, as it was said, he later won the championship of the Imperial Exam.

The words that belong to the past

Hundreds of years later, though, these fancy designs started to lag in face of typewriting and printing. Before the printing era, the stroke-tangled words didn’t cause too many problems, except the tedious writing process — back then, people liked to write complicated words to practice calligraphy art. Then the printing technology came out, all graphic words were squeezed into identical squares regardless of how many strokes they had got. They had no privilege related to size and strokes. Along with the explosion of written information for the benefit of spread, the big words lost their positions in the ever-shrinking squares.

Until today, “biang” and many other words have no display in the online articles, nor are they provided in word-inputting apps. We can only find them in the image or alphabetic format. Check out its Wikipedia site to get a sense of how they are out of kilter with modern printings.

They missed the high-speed wagon, the printing technology, to grow the business.

Is “biang” the Chinese character that has the biggest number of writing strokes? Nope. The biggest number is over 100. Yes, over 100. Mind you, “biang” has 56 strokes.

This word is called “Suang”. Of course, it has no printing format, either. So check out the image below. Meaning? No idea. I look at the labyrinth structure and find many sub-words inside. They have got the meanings like dragon, bird, deer, soil, mountain, wind, flying, and so on. They are all sort of fortunate words in Chinese tradition. So I guess it’s related to Fengshui –an arcane Chinese philosophy about fortune and health.

The Chinese word “suang”. (Source: Public Character)

A local delicacy, only

Biangbiang noodle’s history has been a bumpy road around its unique name. In the time of hand-writing, the intricate writing shrouded the food with an aura of art. It grew to one of the iconic food of the city. Then printing technology came out, the writing was confined to small squares. These names lost the medium to expand their brand. No matter how hard the restaurant owners pushed the business beyond the city, biangbiang noodles stayed within the city wall of the capital city.

They since tried to use some simple words to replace the name. But the funny fact was, the word “biang” came from a sound. It had no match words with close pronunciation in the dictionary. Besides, the local biangbiang lovers just loved the name as it was.

Maybe the name has brought something the noodle doesn’t need anymore. People lived a slow life in the past, an artistic name would serve as a good appetizer for a relaxing lunch. Now living in the hustle and bustle of modern life, all they need is a quick gobbling, strong flavor, and staying full for a long time. The thick, chewy noodle would well serve the eating purpose. But the incomprehensible name wouldn’t be able to serve the brand anymore.

References

List of capitals in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_China

Imperial Examination in Ancient China.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination

The origins of the biangbiang noodles and the character biáng are unclear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty

Ten Famous Xi’an Noodles. №1: Biang Biang Noodles https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/famous-xian-noodles.htm

Computer entry and phonetic substitution of Chinese characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters

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About the Creator

Bond Wang

Hey, I write about life, culture, and daydreams. Hope I open a window for you, as well as for myself.

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