Reading Chinese Menus: Characters: 丁 and 片 — dīng and piàn — diced and sliced | Adventures with Kake

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丁 and 片

I mentioned in Monday's post on chopsticks that one important consideration in preparing Chinese dishes is making sure that the pieces of food are cut suitably for picking up with chopsticks. Today I'm discussing two common Chinese menu characters related to cutting up food: 丁 (dīng/diced) and 片 (piàn/sliced).

As john points out in a comment on my post on 雞/jī/chicken, 丁 in the name of a dish may indicate that the pieces of meat will be boneless, though in my experience this isn't a hard-and-fast rule.

片 doesn't always literally mean "sliced". For example, 魚片 (yú piàn), though literally translated as "sliced fish", may also be used to refer to whole fish fillets rather than fish slices. Also, as sung noted in a comment on my post on 茶/chá/tea, the Cantonese name for jasmine tea is 香片 (hong pian in Cantonese, xiāng piàn in pinyin), literally "fragrant slice".

Here are some dishes with 丁 in the name:

宮保雞丁	gōng bǎo jī dīng	kung po diced chicken
酸辣雞丁	suān là jī dīng	hot and sour diced chicken
茄丁麵	qié dīng miàn	noodles with diced aubergine

and here are some with 片:

夫妻肺片	fū qī fèi piàn	literally "married couple's lung slices"; a Sichuan cold dish of sliced beef and assorted offal dressed with chilli oil
紅油耳片	hóng yóu ěr piàn	sliced pig's ear in chilli oil
糖醋魚片	táng cù yú piàn	sweet and sour fish fillets
熘肚片	liū dǔ piàn	quick-fried sliced tripe
水煮肉片	shuǐ zhǔ ròu piàn	water-cooked sliced pork

丁:	dīng	radical 1 (一)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen
片:	piàn	radical 91 (片)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen

Related posts:

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment (here's how) and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See my introductory post to the Chinese menu project for what these posts are all about.

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