"馒头和包子有什么不一样？"
Translation:What is the difference between steamed buns and buns?
27 Comments
For those unfamiliar, both are steamed buns made from wheat flour, but mantous are plain while baozis have a filling, normally either savory such as pork and gravy or egg and jiucai, or sweet such as the classic red bean paste.
From Wikipedia about origin of the name "mantou": A popular Chinese legend relates that the name mantou actually originated from the homophonous word mántóu, which literally means "barbarian's head". The legend was set in the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE) when Zhuge Liang (诸葛亮), the Chancellor of the state of Shu Han, led the Shu army on a campaign against Nanman forces in the southern lands of Shu, which correspond to roughly present-day Yunnan, China, and northern Myanmar. After subduing the Nanman king Meng Huo, Zhuge Liang led the army back to Shu, but met a swift-flowing river which defied all attempts to cross it. A barbarian lord informed him that in olden days, the barbarians would sacrifice 49 men and throw their heads into the river to appease the river deity and allow them to cross. As Zhuge Liang did not want to cause any more of his men to lose their lives, he ordered his men to slaughter the livestock the army brought along, and fill their meat into buns shaped roughly like human heads (round with a flat base). The buns were then thrown into the river. After a successful crossing, he named the bun "barbarian's head" (mántóu, 蛮头/蠻頭, which evolved into the modern 馒头/饅頭). Another version of the story relates back to Zhuge Liang's southern campaign when he instructed that his soldiers who had fallen sick from diarrhea and other illnesses in the swampy region be fed with steamed buns with meat or sweet fillings.
Thank you for sharing! It is funny, though, that both of those stories involve buns with filling, while today 馒头 refers to buns without filling.
Maybe depends on region? I regularly eat 馒头 with red bean filling in Zhejiang.
??!! Are you saying that you think they're asking which letters are different in the two words, or am I missing something?
Sometimes we have to write things like "deep-fried dough sticks" and sometimes we can use the chinese words. The problem is that we don't know what is expected beforehand.
From previous translations in the course, I actually believed this would translate as "What are the differences between steamed buns and steamed buns?" XD
Writing to note that this sentence can also be interpreted in the singular, eg "What is the difference between mantou and baozi?" This is generally how this question would be produced imo.
Also in general to the team, I would suggest always having food names transcribed in pinyin like this. "Sticky rice dumpling" for "zongzi" is painfully awkward and even here in China when natives speak English we just call these things by their Chinese names.
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Agreed. Although the English names for 馒头 and 包子 here are not really awkward on their own, in this sentence it doesn't work. "Steamed buns and buns"? These names also don't really show what specifically the food is.
I'm glad I now know that there is a difference between steamed buns and steamed buns! Thanks Duo! XD
Why is 馒头 "steamed bun" in one question and "mantou" in this question...?
I would just like to point out that when I typed "What are the differences between steamed buns and baozi" it told me to write "What is the difference between steamed buns and baozi" when in the sentence construction portion of this question it had me write the former.
I understand both translations, and believe both translations should be accepted. It is merely an error with consistency between the accepted translations in the two questions.
Thank you.
When you get it wrong for writing "What is the difference between buns and steamed buns" and then for writing "What is the difference between a steamed bun and a bun" after thinking you learned your lesson from the first time.
From what I know, mantou is just a solid piece of steamed dough, whereas baozi is a steamed bun with filling.
No, I think that would be: "… yí yàng ma/ … yí yàng bù yí yàng"
Here, we have "…yǒu shénme bù yí yáng", which is a different question.
For consistency please do not use pinyin when speaking English . This makes little sense when there is an English translation
I wrote 'what are the differences between...', was corrected to 'what is the difference between...' and come here to see that the default translation is exactly what I wrote. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ seriously!?!?
Also, it would make learning far less frustrating if any sort of consistency would be added to the course. Please, decide whether to accept 'mantou' or 'steamed bun' and stick with it, ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤!
As usual when I see questionable questions, I checked all the [REPORT] boxes even though none of them apply.
