• “米苔目” is a local noodle unique to the Minnan region.

• “米苔” is pronounced the same as “米筛” (rice sieve) in  Hokkien, with “筛” in Hokkien taking the sound tai, similar to the word “苔” (tāi) in Mandarin. Referring to the holes in a rice sieve, “米筛目” is later used to denote a kind of noodle, which came to be written as “米苔目” in Singapore and Malaysia.

• The traditional way of making bee tai mak is to first add water to rice and grind it into a slurry, then strain the slurry using a rice sieve to obtain rice milk. After that, the rice milk is cooked in hot water to form round noodles with pointed ends.

• In Singapore and Malaysia, bee tai mak is usually cooked and eaten in soup or as dry or fried noodle. However, in China’s Minnan region, bee tai mak is consumed as a cooling food during summer by adding cold sugar syrup, which is different from how it is eaten in Singapore and Malaysia.

米筛目 (Taiwan)

• In Singapore, bee tai mak is also known commonly as “老鼠粉” (literally “mouse noodles”). The term “老鼠粉” has a story behind it: the shape of bee tai mak resembles the faeces of mice, so it was originally known as “老鼠屎粉” (literally “mouse faeces noodles”). However, because the name was inelegant and gross, it became “老鼠粉” with the removal of the word “屎” (faeces).