Zhajiangmian Period COrigin theory CVerified

Zhajiangmian is a northern Chinese noodle dish: boiled wheat noodles topped with a meat sauce made by stir-frying fermented soybean pastes such as huangjiang or tianmianjiang in oil, garnished with slivered cucumber and scallion. Wheat and soybeans were both long at home in the north, and making fermented-bean paste was deeply woven into ordinary kitchens. These everyday ingredients form the foundation of the bowl.

At the heart of the dish is the technique of frying the paste in oil to draw out its aroma and savor, then working it with meat into a thick sauce. Bean paste and noodles are themselves old foods. When zhajiangmian first appeared as a dish of its own is another matter. A 2019 Chinese online essay states that it did not yet exist in Beijing in the early and middle Qing, emerged only in the late Qing, and became widely popular in the 1960s, but it cites no source, and the claim has not been confirmed. The year the dish first appears in writing is also still unknown.

The dish is broadly credited to northern China, and sometimes to Shandong in particular. Whether Shandong or Beijing gave rise to the original form is likewise unsettled. The folklorist Deng Yunxiang is reported to have examined zhajiangmian in his Yanjing Xiangtu Ji, quoting a line from the gazetteer Jingzhao Dili Zhi: "Zhajiangmian is often eaten by wealthy households in the counties of Jingzhao." Another story holds that it was begun by late-Qing Eight Banner descendants whose family fortunes had declined and who wished to keep up appearances. Like the tale about Cixi, this circulates as one of several legends about the dish's beginnings, and no record confirming it has been found.

The home pot and the small neighborhood shop are this dish's stage. According to a 2022 article in the Beijing Evening News, in old Beijing zhajiangmian was everyday home fare; the large restaurants did not serve it, and it was sold instead by small stalls and shops selling fresh-cut noodles. This same zhajiangmian is said to have passed to the Chinese community on the Korean peninsula, where it became the parent of Korea's jajangmyeon.

The origin most often told for zhajiangmian is a court tale involving the Empress Dowager Cixi. When she fled to Xi'an during the Boxer Uprising of 1900, the chief eunuch Li Lianying is said to have found a zhajiangmian shop on South Street; the Empress liked it so much that on returning to Beijing she took the cook back to the palace. It is a dramatic story, easy to repeat, but no contemporary record of it has been found.

It is also the kind of story that attaches an important dish to a famous ruler, and the English-language Wikipedia notes that origin stories of this sort are weakly supported. In a Chinese online essay, the Cixi tale appears as one of several legends about the dish's beginnings, alongside the story of the impoverished Eight Banner descendants. What lacks support is the claim that the dish was born in a scene at court; that is a separate question from zhajiangmian's association with northern China.

So where did it really come from? The year it first appears in writing is unknown, and whether Shandong or Beijing holds the original form has not been settled. The claim that it emerged in the late Qing comes without a cited source. One clue on offer is the line from a local gazetteer that Deng Yunxiang is said to have quoted. Set the palace anecdote aside, and what remains is a noodle dish eaten in the homes and on the streets of the north; when it first took shape as a dish of its own is still not known.