坦坦麺！

[novemberfog]

Is 坦坦麺 really a Chinese dish? I have recently been enjoying this wonderful noodle/soup, and I really like it a lot. But in Japan, a lot of chinese noodles dishes have been adjusted for Japanese taste. I am just curious if it is also eaten in China or Taiwan...

Also, how about 味噌ラーメン　（味噌麺）? I love miso a lot: miso soup, miso ramen, miso pastes, miso pork cutlet, miso salad dressing. Do Chinese also eat miso-based foods?

[skylee]

It's 擔擔/担担 (dan4 dan4) not 坦坦 (tan3 tan3)

[novemberfog]

Yes, you are correct. Thanks for fixing that for me.

[count_zero]

I think it is the standard sichuan signature noodle dish readily available in Beijing certainly. The standard signature Beijing noodle dish is 炸酱面 zhajiangmian, guizhou's is 牛肉拉面.

Talking about miso.... I want to include some Japanese dishes in my menu translation project. 味噌拉面 wèicēng lāmiàn is miso ramen (available in Japanese restaurants, not Chinese), but have I got the pinyin right? it could be weicheng with an 'h' but a lot of people in Beijing don't pronounce their 'h's anyway (liru suo: ze si senme?).

Also I had a confusing conversation about msg (this is really getting tangential now). She told me that weijing was invented in China and weizheng was invented in Japan....?

[novemberfog]

So do noodle shops in China serve 味噌拉面?

I don't know who created MSG, but here is a paper about some of the history of MSG. I didn't read it all, perhaps it may be helpful?

Some history about MSG

[amadeoh]

Talking about miso.... I want to include some Japanese dishes in my menu translation project. 味噌拉面 wèicēng lāmiàn is miso ramen (available in Japanese restaurants, not Chinese), but have I got the pinyin right? it could be weicheng with an 'h' but a lot of people in Beijing don't pronounce their 'h's anyway (liru suo: ze si senme?).

The 'canonical' pronunciation should be wèicēng lāmiàn. And no, Beijingese don't omit 'h' sounds in 'sh', 'zh' or 'ch'. Never. Speaking this way will actually mark you a southerner (i.e. your native language is one of the southern dialects of Chinese). Nonetheless you are very unlikely to hear anyone talking about wèicēng lāmiàn in Beijing. What they actually speak is 'wèizēng ~'. The reason, I guess, is that 'cēng' sounds very harsh to be used as a dish name in Mandarin, and most people learn this word from Taiwanese shows, and that's how the Taiwanese pronounce it. Deviation from canonical pronunciations in the Beijing dialect is quite common, e.g. 谁 as 'shéi' instead of 'shuí', 那个 as 'nèige' instead of 'nàge', 落 as 'lào' instead of 'luò' in some contexts, 为什么 as 'vèishénme' instead of 'wèishénme' (yes, the letter 'v' is one of the consonants in 汉语拼音方案, pronounced like the English 'v' ... though it is never used if used to mark the pronunciation of Standard Mandarin). These are, of course, considered slangy, and are never reflected in any dictionary you are likely to come across, for the dictionaries are supposed to document only Standard Mandarin.

Also I had a confusing conversation about msg (this is really getting tangential now). She told me that weijing was invented in China and weizheng was invented in Japan....?

Weijing is Monosodium glutamate (MSG) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miso) while weiceng is miso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miso). MSG was discovered by a Japanese professor in 1907 as you can read from the wikipedia article. As a matter of fact, it is not an essential ingredient to cooking any Chinese/Japanese cuisine and is mostly used to 'enhance' the taste (many gourmets claim that it has the opposite effect) because the chef is inexperienced or just too lazy to cook properly. Miso, on the other hand, is a traditional Japanese ingredient (and therefore generally not used to cook Chinese food).