Over the last couple of days, I have seen two people in my office eating take out Chinese with chopsticks. Struck me as somewhat of an affectation. Why would you eat take out Chinese with chopsticks instead of a fork?
Also, what is the origin of the name “Chopsticks” for the piano tune?
I always eat Chineese and Japanese food with chopsticks. I bought a couple lovely laquered pairs of chopsticks in Paris. It’s fun, and yeah, it might be a little bit of an affectation, but I really enjoy it. Eating war su gai with a fork seems to me like eating spaghetti with a spoon. You’re SUPPOSED to eat Chineese food with chopsticks.
Two reasons:
(1) That’s the way the Chinese do it, so why not? It’s an atmosphere thing… (plus you can impress your friends with your manual dexterity)
(2) If you ever visit the east, you’ll be glad you learned and practiced. Many resturants don’t have forks…
Like Lissa, I use chopsticks whenever the environment suits. I do it because it seems consistent and because I know I’m going to be visiting the east again and I don’t want to look like a typical clumsy American when I eat.
It’s probably an affectation (unless you’re Chinese or Japanese), but a harmless one. A nice way to show up your friends.
A few months ago, though, I ate in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco. In that case, the chopsticks were an enhancement to the experience (the waitress seemed impressed that I ate the entire meal with them).
Why do we have separate forks for salad and dinner? Why is there a separate plate for your dinner roll? Because that’s the way it’s done. That doesn’t mean that you HAVE to use chopsticks, but as JoeyBlades stated, why not?
Well, as far as Mrs. Kunilou goes, its a cultural thing. Her grandparents were from Japan, so they were more comfortable using chopsticks. They passed that on to her parents, who still use chopsticks at home when eating traditional foods (yes, they also use a knife and fork). Mrs. Kunilou (and the Kunilou kids) use a knife and fork, but when they’re eating with the rest of her family, they’re just as likely to switch over to chopsticks. They’re comfortable with them, so why not?
I, on the other hand, am almost completely inept with them and only use them in a fancy Japanese or Chinese restaurant as part of the atmosphere thing.
Well, if they are eating out of take-out boxes, it’s easier. If you aren’t good with them, at least you can use the “shovel” method by holing the chopsticks close and shovelling it up. Hence, the name. The boxes also are tall, while not very wide. this could make manouvering a spoon into the corners to get the last of the fried rice or kim chee( I know it’s Korean!). On a side note, there was a study done on people who were brought up using chopsticks. Besides increased manual dexterity, they found an interesting fact. Chinese people usually use bamboo chopsticks, whereas Koreans use metal ones. They found that the Koreans had even better manual dexterity than the Chinese.
Strikes me that SOMEBODY can’t use chopsticks and is just green with envy but won’t admit it.
Seriously. They put the chopsticks in the damn bag when you get take-out, so why not use them? In NYC, you only get those pathetic little plastic forks and spoons if you ask special…and it’s harder to eat with them, anyway.
Now, if your co-workers BROUGHT THEIR CHOPSTICKS FROM HOME to eat takeout and show off, THAT would be an affectation.
Any idea why the use of chopsticks came about instead of spoons, forks etc.
You got me, Ike.
I’m gonna go them one better. Carving my own set of sticks and using them at McDonalds!
I always eat chinese/japanese food with chopsticks. It is probably an affectation, but by this point, eating such foods with knife and fork just feels weird. Who knows?
The bigger questions, IMHO, are why did chopsticks develop in the first place, and, given their inefficiency, why haven’t Western utensils replaced them. As much as I enjoy using them, I think it’s obvious that the fork is a much more mechanically efficient method of eating. (No research for this opinion, but, knowing the scientific grant system in this country, I’m sure a paper exists.)
V.
Forks are nice for simple spearing and do a decent job of shoveling, but chopsticks can give you much more control over what you’re trying to pick up. If you know how to handle chopsticks, it’s much easier to pick up both a slice of beef and a piece of broccoli, together, than to spear them together with a fork. It’s also a lot easier to eat a noodle soup with chopsticks than with a fork.
Why eat with barbaric metal instruments when it isn’t even helpful?
Have to agree with you here. For certain foods chopstics just feel right.
But I have to disagree on this one, particularly the assumption that chopstics are inefficient. Granted, chopsticks don’t have much of a shape to take advantage of, but the big plus is that you can manipulate them. They’re not just a static lump of metal.
In fact, I’ve naturally started to cook with a pair of chopsticks nearby. Almost any time I want to manipulate something that I don’t want to touch (messy, hot, whatever), I use the chopsticks. Try rolling a crepe with them sometime, or to turn meatballs while they’re browning, and you’ll wonder why Westerners didn’t snap to this idea sooner.
starfish asked:
Early eating utensils were made out of wood. For health reasons they were not reusable. Straight sticks, particularly made out of bamboo were easy to make and quite functional, once you get the hang of it.
SuaSponte wrote:
I question your claim of inefficiency. They may be inefficient if you don’t know how to use them, but a reasonably deft Chinese or Japanese person can do things with a chop stick that you could never do with a fork. As for replacing with Western utensils, thousands of years of cultural history and tradition begs the question: Why would they want to? Besides, have you ever seen a Chinese person who’s never eaten with a fork try to master it? Now that’s funny!
One of the reasons that I had heard for the Chinese preference of chopsticks over forks, and knives was that those utensils were considered to be like weapons because they were made of metal, and sharp, and weapons have no place at the table. However, it may just be a flowery reason ;).
My guess is because well, it’s cheaper and easier to just get a culm of bamboo, and cut out pieces for chopsticks.
Anyway, I use forks at home, because it’s easier, and i’m not picky like that ;). We do have chopsticks here at home, because my mom likes to eat chinese food with chopsticks. At the Japanese restaurant in town, they only have chopsticks set out, unless you ask for a fork (even the miso soup doesnt come with a spoon, since you put the bowl to your lips and drink the liquid, and use the chopsticks to eat the solid ingredients). A Chinese restaurant in nearby Monterey has these very nice disposeable bamboo chopsticks, but my friends and I usually just keep the ones we used ;).
I forget where I have read this, but the writer of that tune intended it to be played with the sides of the hands, in a chopping motion. Thus she named it “Chopsticks”. And yes, I did do a web search but only got searches about the utensils and not the tune.
Using Yahoo to search “chopsticks” and “piano” eventually got me her name. Searching on her name got me this page among others:
Not authoritative perhaps, but it’ll get you started.
I, too, eat Chinese and Japanese food with chopsticks. Like the others said - it just feels right. And, did you ever try to get that weak little plastic fork to spear a piece of broccoli? It’s nearly impossible.
Since I think I’m the only one in town that knows how to use them, the local Chinese take out restaurant doesn’t supply them (even if you ask), so, if we order on a whim I need to use the stupid plastic fork. 
It sort of bothers me sometimes, too. A couple of weeks ago, S.O. and I went to the local Japanese steak house. I was the only one at the table who didn’t ask for a fork. Everyone at the table stared at me the entire meal. I’m pretty shy and I don’t like people looking at me too much - I wished the floor would have opened up and swallowed me (yet, not enough to get a fork)
I think forks are designed as a companion to knives - how often do you eat an entire meal with only a fork? But you don’t need a knife to eat Chinese food. Because of the scarcity of fuel (wood), Chinese cooking is designed to minimize the amount of fuel needed, which means cutting everything in bite-sized chunks before cooking.
I’ve seen people in HK eat almost anything with chopsticks, and they do not seem to be disadvantaged by not using knives and forks.
However, i’ve also seen some amazing people (at some typical HK fast food restaurants) using knives and forks to eat chicken wings (winglets??) and you cannot imagine how fast they can go through them, without any piece of meat left sticking on the bones (and i’m talking about seconds here - they can unbone so many winglets in less than a minute). So like i said before, i think the more accustomed you are at using whatever you use, the more practical and easy it seems to you.
I myself cannot use neither chopsticks nor knive + forks to eat winglets, I’m have to use my hands and fingers hehe.