"醡" and "炸" in "醡醬麵" and "炸醬麵" I've just noticed that the English Wikipedia gives these spellings for "Zhajiangmian":


Simplified Chinese    炸酱面
Traditional Chinese   醡醬麵


Whereas the English Wiktionary gives these:


炸酱面 (simplified, Pinyin zhájiàngmiàn, traditional 炸醬麵)


I'm in Taipei and have a menu from a restaurant at the local night market. The spelling on the menu is "醡醬麵" as in Wikipedia.

Now Wiktionary does not list "炸" and "醡" as the simplified and traditional variants of the same characters!

So what's going on here? Is one a Taiwanese spelling rather than a simplified vs traditional spelling? Are the two any kind of variants of each other or is it just a quirk of this single word? Are they fully interchangeable? Also is this related to the two pinyin spellings with the differing tones on the first syllable?
醡醬麵 and 炸醬麵


炸醬麵 can work as it means "noodles with fried sauce"

醡醬麵 is "noodles with extracted sauce (e.g. extracting oil)"


炸 fried (火 fire radical + phonetic 乍 zhà)
醡 extract (酉 container + 窄 narrow; from 穴 hole and 乍) Archaic character for 榨 (tool for extraction process. 木 wood used to refer to tools in this case)
醬 sauce
麵 noodles


Alternatively, 酢醬麵 is also used. The Koreans have used this but it's now written 炸醬麵. I guess the difference is 醡 is a much older usage which is now replaced with 炸 in modern times. Taiwan tends to retain older usage.