For most of their existence, they have been an obscure dish local to Xi'an, eaten by workers lacking the time to make thinner noodles.

More recently, the noodles have become more widely known across China, in a rise driven to some extent by social media interest in the esoteric character used to write biáng.

[1] The word biáng is onomatopoeic, being said to resemble the sound of the thick noodle dough hitting a work surface.

[1] There are many variations of the character for biáng, but the most widely accepted version is made up of 58 strokes in its traditional form[a] (42 in simplified Chinese).

Both traditional and simplified forms had been submitted to the Ideographic Rapporteur Group for inclusion in CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G.[5] As the characters are not widely available on computers (and not supported by many fonts), images of the characters, phonetic substitutes like 彪彪面 (biāobiāomiàn) or 冰冰面 (bīngbīng miàn), as well as the pinyin, are often used instead.

[16] In a possible April fools' joke, Toshiya Suzuki suggested adding a new block ("CJK Complex Ideographic Symbols"), setting "" as a basic shape, unifying the variation and even admitting "" as a variant of the character.

[20] According to a China Daily article, the word "biang" is an onomatopoeia that actually refers to the sound made by the chef when he creates the noodles by pulling the dough and slapping it on the table.