{"id":301,"date":"2016-11-27T13:54:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-27T13:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/?p=301"},"modified":"2016-11-28T03:04:25","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T03:04:25","slug":"the-language-of-noodles-linguistic-notes-on-understanding-chongqing-xiaomian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"The Language of Noodles (Linguistic Notes on Understanding Chongqing Xiaomian)"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\np.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}\np.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0px}\nspan.s1 {font: 12.0px 'Songti SC'}\n--><\/style>\n<p>I like noodles in an amateur, casual sort of way. Brother Lamp, whom I wrote about in my recent article \u201c<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/roadsandkingdoms.com\/2016\/chongqings-number-one-noodle-obsessive\/\">Chongqing\u2019s Number One Noodle Obsessive<\/a><\/strong>,\u201d is in a different category. He\u2019s obsessed. He\u2019s crazy about them. He\u2019s so infatuated that an outside observer might categorize his relationship to noodles as a sickness.<\/p>\n<p>The term \u201cnoodle obsessive\u201d is an awkward translation: it captures some, but not all of this passion. This is a translation issue: in Chinese, Lamp is a \u9762\u75f4 (<em>mianchi<\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>The first character, <em>mian<\/em> \u9762, means noodles. The second character, <em>chi<\/em> \u75f4, means infatuation; it is literally translated as \u201c<em>silly or idiotic; crazy about something; insane or mad<\/em>.\u201d The character can be broken down into two parts: the outer section \u7592, which represents an illness of some kind; and the inner part <em>zhi<\/em> \u77e5, which means to know and provides the overall sound of the word (zhi \u2014&gt; chi). To be a \u75f4 is to be an obsessive, sure, but it is a level above and beyond. It is not just crazy about something in the way that we are all crazy about something, but literally <em>crazy,\u00a0<\/em>linguistically more similar to a disease than a love.<\/p>\n<p>Brother Lamp\u2019s preferred noodle, Chongqing <i>xiaomian<\/i>, is itself confusing. It means &#8220;little noodle,&#8221; yet its distinct importance comes from the fact that it is not, in fact, little. Walk down any street in China and you will see stores selling all kinds of local snacks, or xiaochi \u5c0f\u5403 \u2014 little eats. Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan and Chongqing\u2019s neighbor to the northwest, is a hotbed of world-famous xiaochi, including <i>dan dan mian<\/i> \u62c5\u62c5\u9762. (<em>Dan<\/em> \u62c5 means to carry on your shoulder; the name dan dan mian comes from the Sichuanese street vendors who carry it on a pole on their shoulders to sell it).<\/p>\n<p>Some versions of Chongqing xiaomian, bursting with Sichuan peppercorns and chili oil, taste indistinguishable from Sichuan-style dan dan mian. Many people who are not Brother Lamp consider the differences to be marginal; yet to a true mianchi there is a key distinction: dan dan mian is a snack (xiaochi), while xiaomian is a staple food (zhushi).<\/p>\n<p>Historically, xiaomian was served in portions of 150 grams, or three <i>liang<\/i>, a Chinese unit of measure equivalent to 50 grams. Dan dan mian, meanwhile, was only two liang. A two-liang bowl, Brother Lamp says, leaves you hungry for more; it is merely a snack. A three-liang bowl of noodles \u2014 and I will attest to this fact, having eaten far too many three-liang bowls of noodles \u2014 will leave you full. Extraordinarily, painfully full.<\/p>\n<p>This linguistic difference is irrelevant in modern society, obliterated by consumer choice. At any xiaomian stall, you can order two or three liang bowls; at some, like Zhu Lin Beef Noodles, you can order a mere one liang. Yet during the early years of the People\u2019s Republic of China, when food was rationed and resources limited, the difference between a two liang bowl and a three liang bowl meant something more.<\/p>\n<p>To Lamp, the difference matters. After all, his identity depends on it.<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I like noodles in an amateur, casual sort of way. Brother Lamp, whom I wrote about in my recent article \u201cChongqing\u2019s Number One Noodle Obsessive,\u201d is in a different category. He\u2019s obsessed. He\u2019s crazy about them. He\u2019s so infatuated that an outside observer might categorize his relationship to noodles as a sickness. The term \u201cnoodle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,14,98],"tags":[56,100,99],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-food","category-roads-and-kingdoms","tag-language","tag-noodles","tag-xiaomian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jbfreedman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}