Sad jelly noodles
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Name of a restaurant in Xinyi District, Taipei, Taiwan:
shāngxīn suānlà fěn 傷心酸辣粉
In English, the restaurant calls itself "Sad Super Hot Noodles".
Setting aside the shāngxīn 傷心, which comes across in the Chinglish translation as "sad", for the moment, let's look at the other parts of the restaurant name:
suānlà 酸辣 (lit., "sour spicy") — I suspect that a goodly portion of Language Log readers have this term as part of their vocabulary, since it is the disyllabic descriptor in "suānlà tāng 酸辣汤" ("hot and sour soup"), a quintessential Sichuanese dish
fěn 粉 — we are familiar with this ingredient of Chinese cooking (cellophane / glass / jelly noodles / vermicelli) from this post:
"Potatoes Torch" (6/8/14)
By itself, fěn 粉 means "powder; noodles or vermicelli made from bean, potato, or sweet potato starch", etc.), but the fěn 粉 in these recipes is usually mǐfěn 米粉 ("rice-flour noodles / vermicelli"). Fěnsī 粉丝 ("vermicelli") can also be made of mung bean starch and, as with the hóngshǔ fěnsī 红薯粉丝 that we're discussing here, of sweet potato starch.
But what to do with shāngxīn 傷心? This adjective is usually rendered as "sad; grieved; broken-hearted", but how can that work for "hot and sour vermicelli"?
shāng 傷 by itself means "injure; hurt; wound; harm"
xīn 心 by itself means "heart-mind"
I’ve seen shāngxīn 傷心 in the context of Chinese cooking explained as “so spicy it’ll make you cry”. In that sense, it does "wound / hurt" you, so I suppose we could translate the whole name as something like "painfully hot and sour vermicelli".
[h.t. Nancy Friedman; thanks to Fangyi Cheng]
Gene Anderson said,
April 6, 2016 @ 11:41 am
Sounds good! Hope they start a branch in LA.
Doc Rock said,
April 6, 2016 @ 11:52 am
I guess "heartburn" for 傷心 might not make for the best press? Or would it?
Guy said,
April 6, 2016 @ 1:18 pm
Is it necessary to break shāngxīn apart into its components to explain the meaning? "Eye-watering" seems like a more faithful translation.
david said,
April 6, 2016 @ 3:31 pm
'Mind blowing' comes to mind as an appropriate translation for shāngxīn
JS said,
April 7, 2016 @ 11:25 am
I'm going to say 'heart-rending'.
Victor Mair said,
April 7, 2016 @ 11:42 am
I love all the suggestions. Brilliant!
Mark S. said,
April 8, 2016 @ 1:15 am
Well, for "sad" foods, there's ànránxiāohún fàn, to give the Mandarin name.
Victor Mair said,
April 8, 2016 @ 8:59 am
@Mark S.
Thank you for finding this precious gem.
That is classic, just classic. Short (1:48), but, oh, so powerful! One of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. The genius of Cantonese cinema!
The title is: "Sorrowful Rice 黯然銷魂飯".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9JqT-O5eqY
First uploaded on 1/4/08. 17 comments.
Cantonese pronunciation: am2jin4siu1wan4 faan6
As a quadrisyllabic expression, 黯然銷魂 is said to mean "depressed; dejected; downcast". Quintessentially, it describes the sorrow one feels upon parting from a bosom friend.
Broken down into disyllabic units:
黯然 ("darkly; dim; faint; gloomy; dejected; downcast; low-spirited; sad" — used mainly as the first half of quadrisyllabic expressions, describing the manner in which the action / event / feeling specified in the second half of a given quadrisyllabic expression occurs)
銷魂 ("ecstasy; rapture; be transported by joy or sorrow; to feel overwhelming joy or sorrow" — lit., "the soul melts away")
This is what happens when you eat perfectly prepared barbecued pork rice.
Bob said,
April 8, 2016 @ 11:53 am
銷魂，90% of this term used as ecstasy… particularly as reaching male sexual height.. a silent ecstasy means "forbidden love affair" .. as a name for a meal, it means, heavenly good…..
Victor Mair said,
April 8, 2016 @ 2:18 pm
From Carmen Lee:
I heard in my last trip to Hong Kong (in December) that nowadays young couples almost never cook at home and always eat in restaurants/ little food shops. They are called mou4faan6 fu1cai1 無飯夫妻 ("a couple, where both partners cannot cook well"), which sounds very similar to mou4faan6 fu1cai1 模範夫妻 ("model couple").
Victor Mair said,
April 8, 2016 @ 6:31 pm
The complete 1 hour and 28 minute 1996 film (from which the "Sorrowful Rice" segment is taken), written and directed by Stephen Chow, is called "Sik6san1 食神" ("The God of Cookery"). Here's the link.
The Cantonese word for barbecued pork is char siu (cha1shao1 叉燒, lit., "fork-roast").
Didi Kirsten Tatlow said,
April 8, 2016 @ 9:09 pm
Mulling whether char siu is a Cantonese equiv of Proust's madeleine: 黯然销魂饭 as a culinary sorrowful joy or heavenly pain (in Proust's case, nostalgia,) that mixes deep satisfaction with loss (because the thing with food is, in eating it you disappear it.) Char siu is entirely evocative of Hong Kong and the south.