Also be mindful that different cultures have different etiquette regarding chopsticks…
I started using chopstick around 5 or 6 (Chinese)
Most of the time, if eating rice with chopsticks, you actually hold up the bowl of rice and scoop the rice in using the chopsticks (which is a no-go, as someone has pointed out, in other cultures).
My son and I went to Pick up Stixx recently and he was offered a little specially wrapped plastic dohicky to refasten his chopsticks together so they would be springy. That was the first time I’d seen that.
Relevant to the OP, though, a while ago we went out to a popular dim sum place in a heavily Asian part of the San Diego area. Among the families we saw, quite a few young children were using chopsticks.
It’s hard to glean what’s authentic for a particular culture from observing people around here. Houston is very diverse, so there’s a lot of mixing and adapting among all the various cultures. Many of our “Chinese” restaurants are actually run by Vietnamese immigrants, so the Vietnamese food might be fairly authentic but the Chinese dishes often are more Americanized. I never have seen anyone eat rice from the bowl in a restaurant here – it’s usually served in a small bowl on the side with a serving spoon so you can put the rice on your plate, then mix it with the meat/vegetables/sauce, so picking it up and eating it from the bowl really isn’t a good option. Sometimes the sauce is sticky enough that you can dip a piece of meat or veggie into the rice with chopsticks and make some stick, but you usually have to finish with a fork.
I usually see little kids eating with a spoon (or their fingers).
I know that different cultures have different chopstick rules, but I think things are pretty lax here. If I was visiting another country, I would try to be as inoffensive as possible, but possibly fail.
Not to worry in Thailand. They may think your using chopsticks with rice is cute and quaint, but they’re not being mean. And as long as it’s obvious that foreigners are not trying to be boorish oafs, they cut them a lot of slack here and don’t get offended – too much slack in some cases actually, from some foreigners I’ve seen.
In Japan, kids start using chopsticks around 2. The more precocious ones start at as young as 18 months. As has been mentioned, they usually start out with trainer chopsticks that are tied at the top. Here’s one example, but there are many different designs. Here’s another system, by Combi. However, it’s not uncommon to see tiny children eat with regular (but tiny) chopsticks. From what I hear, young children will often insist on using them quite early, to do like the grown-ups.
As for eating rice, if it’s the plain white gohan that accompanies almost every meal here, everyone eats it with chopsticks. Fried rice, or any kind of rice that doesn’t hold itself together is always eaten with spoons. This, or this: chopsticks. This, or this: spoon.
Asia reaches all the way to Turkey, Russia and Egypt. “East Asia” would be a better term for the area you are referring to.
My kids (half Japanese, living in Japan) began using chopsticks at about 18 months old - or rather they were on the table or highchair for them to muck about with! Mostly they ate with their hands like every other toddler!
My Japanese friend taught me to only ever place the chopsticks on their upturned palms for them to grasp, and to never let them pick them up overhand, as then you begin with the wrong posture right from the beginning.
I was really pissed off about nine months into my elder son’s daycare experience when I happened to go in to pick him up at lunch time and saw that every single other kid in the three year old group was eating with chopsticks and he was using a spoon. I asked what the hell was going on and they said that they had assumed he wouldn’t be able to use chopsticks because he was a “foreigner” and had from the beginning gone out and bought him his own special spoon. No wonder his manners weren’t improving at home! It was hard to know how to react, they were being utterly racist and “othering” towards him but it had been done with good and kind intentions and it was a treasure of a place, so I just carefully and calmly said that from the next day he’d be eating with chopsticks just like everyone else, thank you.
Both my kids have horrible chopstick holds, so that the points cross. MIL gets on to them every time she sees it and I confess to being a bit ashamed of them but at 8 and 12 it’s a habit by now. We do keep at them to mind their chopstick manners (don’t lick them, don’t stick them into food and leave them there, don’t pass stuff to other’s chopsticks, dont put your chopsticks into communal food etc.)
Hokkaido Brit has it nailed. Kids start playing with chopsticks in China at the same time they start playing with spoons, forks or sporks. In pre-school, which can start at 2 years old (mandatory at 3), kids definately start using chopsticks at school along with a spoon. I think it’s peer pressure. My kids all just gradually started using chopsticks. China doesn’t use kiddie sticks with the ends connected type thing, but they do use a shortened and easier to grip pair.
To add to jovan, Hokkaido Brit and China Guy, my son (half-Japanese, living in Japan) is just under 2 and is starting to use chopsticks to eat rice. He began a few months back trying to imitate us, so we got him kid-sized chopsticks of his own.
This seems to be a good place to relate this story. A couple of years ago, my family and I were in a Chinese restaurant eating. I was giving my son (about 10 at the time, 14 now and he can use chopsticks just fine) a little bit of a hard time because he was having difficulty using chopsticks, he wanted to use a fork. I went on and on about eating food with the utensils it had been designed for, explaining about sticky rice and eating it with the bowl before your face, food with chunks that chopsticks could easily handle, the whole nine yards. Suddenly, a group of the cooks, Asians all, the very people who had prepared this authentic Chinese food, came out of the kitchen and sat down to eat their dinner. To a man they used forks. Matthew looked at them, looked at me, raised his eyebrow and picked up his fork and started eating. What could I say? I was cut off at the knees quite nicely. 
What pisses me off is that if I, the gaijin, pick something up with chopsticks and drop it, it is noticed and commented on because “Gaijin can’t use chopsticks”. But if any Japanese in the group drop something, that’s because everyone drops things occasionally. Grrr!
Also, “Can you use chopsticks?” is a standard ask-the-gaijin line even if you’ve just said you’ve lived here 20 years. When I was having my son by cesarean here 12 years ago, I was very frightened and began to cry. The nurses were very taken aback by this and one kind, kind soul took my hand, and asked “Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?” I said yes, just to talk to me to take my mind off the ripping and tugging going on down there. So she took a deep breath, stared deeply into my eyes and asked, “Can you use chopsticks???”
Not all of us - in the UK you would refer to people from western Asia (India, Mongolia, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc) as Asian and people from eastern Asia as oriental.
Background: We have 4 Chinese daughters. They were 10 months, 20 months, 6 years, and 23 months old when we adopted them. They are now 7 years, 6 years, 9 years and 2.5 years old respectively.
How early do they learn?
The 6 year old (20 months at the time) could eat with chopsticks quite well. She didn’t have any technique, she just grabbed them about 2" from the tip and wiggled her fingers and stuff got picked up and she would eat it.
When we adopted the 9 year old (then 6), during our first meal in a restaurant the staff noticed that VeryCoolSpouse was struggling with chopsticks and brought her a fork. ThenNewDaughter insisted on a fork as well and did at every restaurant we were in from then on. She uses chopsticks now, but infrequently.
Our baby, just less than 2 when adopted, didn’t seem to have any chopstick skills at all, but maybe that was because the local Child Welfare Institute didn’t encourage it–dunno about that.
I don’t have any trouble using chopsticks for even non-sticky rice/fried rice, and I was born in Los Angeles, California of European-stock parents with no cross-cultural leanings of any sort. Tried off-and-on for years and never got good, but with the multiple trips to China (starting when I was 50) got fairly competent.
I’m living in Sichuan Province with a Chinese family right now…
Kids seem to learn at about the same time American kids learn to use forks. It’s really not THAT much more complicated a thing to be doing.
I’ve been surprised at how chopsticks are used for EVERYTHING. It’d never occur to people to bring out a knife and fork for anything- now and then if they serve something extremely soupy they will bring out a spoon for me. I’ve eaten pizza, whole slices of white bread, cocktail franks, tiny kernals of corn, and of course rice with chopsticks.
As has been mentioned before the rice is sticky and it’s okay to bring your bowl up to your mouth and shovel it in. After the first day or two I could clean my bowl no problem, though it helps if I pat down the rice when I scoop it in.
The eating style is extremely different than in American Chinese restaurants (though I was surprised to find some dishes were familiar- mostly kung pao chicken and ma po tofu.) You start out eating small bits from the communal dishes. In a restaurant they will be brought out one at a time. You can rest a bit in your bowl if you want, but honestly everyone ends up eating straight from the communal dishes. The rice comes towards the end of the meal and you may rest some food on it so the sauce can flavor it, but it’s nothing like the way we serve food “over rice” in America.
Yes, so I’ve heard. You guys eat more curry than I do. As Russell Peters says, 400 YEARS!!!
Over here, I’ve always heard the rule is that people are Asian, and only objects should be referred to as Oriental (rugs, vases, etc.).
I agree that “East Asian” is more accurate for what I was asking, though I would be surprised if most non-Asian people over here knew the difference. I feel confident that a good many of them would assume East Asia is a country.
Oh yeah, we all hate being called oriental. We are not rugs!
Oh no, not this debate again. :smack:
From west to east, the people are all Asians and all Oriental, just like I’m an Occidental. I’ve never encountered an Asian who took offense at the term Oriental, even if it’s not as common these days to use it.
IN THE U.S. Oriental is an old fashioned term that a few people take offense at. Asian is a “safer” word to use. Safer still is to use words like Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Hmong, Chinese or Indian. But that can be tricky in itself, since you usually don’t know the country of origin, and its easy to insult someone who is Hmong by referring to them as Laotian or Vietnamese. (Indians in the U.S. are less commonly lumped into Asian than they are in England - where Asian is a broader term that can include Middle Eastern…it isn’t wrong, but it isn’t common to refer to Indians as Asian.)
But its easy in a conversation like this to just never refer to race - “at what age did your kids learn to use chopsticks” is a valid question - my white kid learned around three or four, just like my Korean one.
I twitch when someone refers to me as Oriental, although I won’t take offense unless it’s obviously meant. My advice would be to avoid the term if possible.
As for chopsticks, I’ve been forced to use them as far back as I can remember. I recall using them to spear stuff when I was a kid, and having one in each hand to rip kimchee apart. My parents were not amused.
