A short talk about LieMian(烈面)

CJX

LieMian, a small town of WuSheng County, SiChuan Province, where I spent two years for high school study in 1970s, is a memorable place in my lifetime.

when I was a student there, LieMian was just a place name to help me to separate it from other places, such as ShaXi, ZouMa, FuXing, etc.

Decades of years later, I began to think that what does LieMian mean? Or how it was coined? and so on.

I once thought that LieMian was a kind of noodles, just like Stewed Noodles（烩面） in HeNan Province. I wanted to restore this kind of noodles to make money.

Not long ago, I read the article of LieMian in the BaiDu Encyclopedia, I gained more ever before.

According to the BaiDu Encyclopedia, in the beginning of this town, people built houses along side of the stream, just in the row and face to the stream, so people called this town as LieMianXi(列面溪).

When a teacher wrote the town’s name, he changed the first word, in Chinese as 烈面溪，with the same pronunciation but having four points under it and meaning strong, or violent; he thought this was the pattern of the town, because the four points represented the four houses of the beginning.

Later it was shorten to LieMian(烈面), and has been used all the way.

Now the stream has been buried under the town’s street of ChunFengJie(淳风街), Because the town has spread over the stream, and became a larger town. The town’s initial pattern has disappeared, so it is more difficulty for modern people of this town to understand the meaning of LieMian.

In a word LieMian is face, not a noodle.