Jessica McCabe: Chopsticks - Kuaizi - Quick little fellows

No one really knows exactly when the Chinese started to use chopsticks. One story says that “greedy people” invented chopsticks. Therefore, they could grab the best pieces of meat while it was still hot. The use of chopstick dates back to around 3000 B.C. when people used tripods set in the fire pits.

Another explanation credits the Chinese preference for chopsticks over knives to the philosopher Confucius (551 to 479 B.C.) Confucius is to have said that “Honorable and upright people would rather see an animal alive than dead. And if they heard the noise and screams of an animal being killed, they would not want to eat its flesh.” Knives represented constant violence and killing. “The honorable man should keep well away from the slaughterhouse and the kitchen and he should not allow knives at the table.”

Through out China by 400 B.C. chopsticks were used almost universally. Chinese had flat-bottomed spoons made of porcelain; they found the traditional European spoons most inefficient. These spoons are used for the consumption of soup only.

The use of chopsticks really shaped the Chinese cuisine especially in the practice of stir frying vegetables and meats in a wok. Preparation for cooking vegetables and meats one must cut the food into bit size pieces for two reasons; one so that a person using chopsticks can pick the food up with ease, and in order for the food to cook uniformly.

Most Chinese chopsticks are ten to twelve inches long about as thick as a pencil, squared at the end one hold in hand. There are smaller chopsticks made for children that are about five inches “training chopsticks.” Chopsticks have been made of an assortment of materials Ivory, Gold, Silver, porcelain bamboo and even Jade. The use of silver in particular was believed to have special powers that could reveal poisons, when silver turns black. (In reality the cause for silver turning black or tarnishing is a natural chemical reaction, when silver comes in contact with sulfur or extreme acid or base pH.) Chopsticks made of either gold or silver are very difficult to use one has to have very strong fingers to use these chopsticks. The Chinese custom of using chopsticks eventually spread to other neighboring countries even to Japan in about 500 A.D. However, the Japanese (Hashi) chopsticks are smaller in length and tapered.

Chopsticks placed usually to the right or below a small central plate. Proper etiquette dictates that one should not stand one’s chopsticks straight up in a rice, this usually signals a spiritual offering or as a token of a recent a death. Another point to remember is that it is considered impolite to point with one’s chopsticks. The Japanese consider it unlucky to pass food from chopstick to chopstick. It is also considered impolite to bang one’s chopsticks against one’s bowl this is a sign of being a beggar.

Chopstick literal translation means quick fellows. A gift of a pair of chopstick to newly married couple for good luck, in hopes that the couple will have many sons.

In Shanghai the world’s largest collection of chopstick is on display at the Shanghai chopstick museum visitors from around the world can see some of the oldest and most ornate chopsticks, the museum boosts as have over a thousand pairs of chopsticks.