The name of the noodle takes more than 50 strokes to write. It only joined the Unicode standard in 2020, and many ordinary keyboards still cannot type it. In Arlington, Virginia, people wait in line for a bowl of it anyway.
The dish is biangbiang noodles, also called belt noodles, from Xi'an in northwest China. The sound in the name is said to copy dough being slapped on a board. Cooks pull the wheat dough by hand until the strands are wide, thick, and long.
A New York chain, Xi'an Famous Foods, opened a shop in Arlington in August 2026. CEO Jason Wang told ARLnow that this one location has been busier than its shops in midtown Manhattan, the Financial District, and Chinatown added together. Staff have had to ask some customers to come back another day. Wang said a main reason for the rush is "an authentic, regional Chinese option that's very accessible." Another shop is planned in Maryland in October.
The same noodles have already traveled farther. In 2017, TASTE magazine found a Friday-night queue outside Xi'an Impression in London, across from Arsenal's stadium. Chicago and Seattle had shops devoted to the dish as well.
For years, Chinese children learned that the character for biang was almost impossible to write. Now diners in the United States stand in line for the noodles, and most of them still cannot type the name. The character was hard. The bowl, it turns out, was not.