MUZIChinese Matrix
Cold Tossing · FFET10201
Cooked noodles cooled in water and tossed with soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil or sesame paste, served with shredded cucumber.
A deep white porcelain bowl holds pale noodles coated in glossy red chili oil sauce, topped with garlic, green cucumber shreds, orange carrot shreds and scallion, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the bowl.
The method of dressing raw or cooked-and-cooled ingredients with seasoning and serving them cold.
Cold noodles are noodles cooked, cooled in water and tossed cold with a sauce of soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil or sesame paste, often with vegetables such as shredded cucumber. Shanghai, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Wuhan, Jingzhou (Shashi) and Taiwan each have their own versions. A 2025 article recounts that Du Fu made lengtao in Kuizhou in 767, working locust-leaf juice into flour, cutting the dough into noodles, boiling them and cooling them in cold water. Lengtao is an old cold noodle dish; today's liangmian has no established place of origin, and no dated record or direct link to lengtao was confirmed.
Cold noodles are noodles cooked and cooled in water, then dressed cold with soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil, sesame paste or similar, often with shredded cucumber, carrot or bean sprouts.1,3,4,5
A 2025 article recounts that Du Fu made lengtao in Kuizhou in 767: locust-leaf juice was worked into flour, the dough was cut into noodles and boiled, and the noodles were cooled in cold water. Lengtao is an old cold noodle dish; no dated record of today's liangmian or direct link to lengtao was confirmed.2
Cold noodle versions exist in Shanghai, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Wuhan, Jingzhou (Shashi) and Taiwan. The place of origin remains unspecified, and this entry's recipe is a home version that does not represent any one of these places.1
The noodles are boiled, cooled in cold water and drained, then tossed with a sauce of soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil or sesame paste and topped with shredded cucumber, carrot, bean sprouts or scallion. Of 2 versions, 1 uses spaghetti with soy sauce, vinegar and chili oil; the other tosses noodles in peanut butter and sesame paste with raw vegetables.1,4,5
Why the dish arose and why it is eaten this way remain unspecified; this entry does not speculate.1,2,3,4,5
Cold noodle versions exist in Shanghai, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Wuhan, Jingzhou (Shashi) and Taiwan. No intangible heritage or time-honored-brand listing was verified for the dish.1
Legend has it that in the Tang dynasty Empress Wu Zetian burned her tongue on hot noodles, and some people mention this story when they talk about where cold noodles came from.
Told in: A popular tale, told in a Qianjiang Evening News article of August 17, 2016 that gives no source for it, so it is treated here just as a tale.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is the simpler way I make it at home, with dried spaghetti-style noodles that many kitchens keep, so it is an adaptation and not the traditional cold noodles of any one city. The amounts of soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil and sugar are those of the sour spicy cold noodles recipe, halved; the cucumber and carrot come from the cold sesame noodles recipe; the other amounts are my own choices at home. Both published recipes are adaptations too, one made with spaghetti and the other with peanut butter.
Allergens: wheat, soy, sesame
