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Shahe fen
Shahe fen , or simply he fen (河粉), is a type of wide Chinese noodle made from rice. Its Minnan Chinese name, 粿條 (pronounced guǒtiáo in Mandarin), is adapted into alternate names which are widely encountered in Southeast Asia, such as kway teow, kwetiau, and kuetiau; Thai: ก๋วยเตี๋ยว (kuaitiao). Shahe fen is often stir-fried with meat and/or vegetables in a dish called chao fen (炒粉; pinyin: chǎo fěn). While chao fen is a transliteration of Mandarin, chow fun from Cantonese (see the main article at beef chow fun) is the name most often given to the dish in Chinese restaurants in North America.
While shahe fen and he fen are transliterations based on Mandarin, there are numerous other transliterations based on Cantonese, which include ho fun, hofoen (a Dutch transliteration in Suriname), hor fun, sar hor fun, etc. In addition, shahe fen is often synonymously called kway teow (粿條), literally "ricecake strips", transliteration based on Minnan Chinese, POJ: kóe-tiâu) or in Mandarin, guotiao (Mandarin pinyin: guǒtiáo), as in the name of a dish called char kway teow.
However, generally, Minnan people consider shahe fen and kway teow to be two distinct foods, and continue to make a distinction between shahe fen and guotiao/kway teow in their speech. Hor fun was developed by the Cantonese and is thin and tapered like strips of tape, with some porous areas that absorb the gravy, taste, and flavour of the broth or sauce that it is cooked in because it contains less starchy content, which has been stripped away during the production process. In contrast, guotiao/kuay teow is dense, and less absorbent and contains a higher level of starch and is more impermeable to absorbing flavours, and thus has to be soaked for a longer period of time in the dish preparation usually for a day or more, or is soaked in water first for a long time before it is fried as char kway teow. The taste, texture, flavour, ingredients, length, thickness, width, style, density are considered very different to many people in China and Asia more broadly, but often people from other regions are not be able to tell the difference immediately.
