Mapo Doufu - Etymology

Etymology

The full name of Mapo doufu is "Chen Mapo Doufu", where "Chen" is the family name of the inventor's husband, but people normally shorten it to "Mapo Doufu" for easier memorizing. Ma stands for "mazi" (Pinyin: mázi Traditional Chinese 麻子) which means a person disfigured by pockmarks or leprosy, the latter is also called 痲 má or 麻風 máfēng. Po (Chinese 婆) translates as "old woman, crone". Hence, Ma Po is an old woman whose face was pockmarked, and "Doufu" is the Chinese phonetic symbol which stands for tofu. It is thus sometimes translated as "Pockmarked-Face Lady's Tofu".

Legend says that the pock-marked old woman (má pó), Fuchun Chen's wife, was a widow who lived in the Chinese city of Chengdu. Due to her condition, her home was placed on the outskirts of the city. By coincidence, it was near a road where traders often passed. Although the rich merchants could afford to stay within the numerous inns of the prosperous city while waiting for their goods to sell, the poor workers would stay in cheaper inns scattered along the sides of roads on the outskirts of the ancient city. These poor workers, or heavers, earned their lives by transporting edible oil from workshops to restaurants. Often they brought some tofu and beef and ask the pock-marked woman to prepare it for them. As time went by, the pock-marked woman created a special and unique way to cook tofu and her restaurant became well known for her tofu. Someone then named the tofu she cooked as Mapo tofu, which means tofu cooked by the pock-marked women. Another less widely accepted explanation stems from an alternative definition of 麻, meaning "numb": the Szechuan peppercorns used in the dish numb the diner's mouth.

According to Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook: "Eugene Wu, the Librarian of the Harvard Yenching Library, grew up in Chengtu and claims that as a schoolboy he used to eat Pock-Marked Ma's Bean Curd or mapo doufu, at a restaurant run by the original Pock-Marked Ma herself. One ordered by weight, specifying how many grams of bean curd and meat, and the serving would be weighed out and cooked as the diner watched. It arrived at the table fresh, fragrant, and so spicy hot, or la, that it actually caused sweat to break out."

Nowadays, "Chen Mapo Dofu" restaurants open at several locations in Chengdu, with one on Xiyulong St. and another near the Qingyang Gong Temple to serve the best version. In 2005, the restaurant near Qingyang Gong Temple was burned down in a fire.