Some of us who have spent all of our lives in the US have also spent most of it using chopsticks every now and then making them just another option to us.
Chopsticks work very well for really good white rice, much better then a fork or spoon. However when I eat … damn it’s been years since I’ve eaten out, that rice with stuff inside (always one of my favorites) or the mainlander rice like Uncle Ben’s (nasty stuff) I use a spoon so I can eat more then one grain at a time.
So it’s not that difficult to become proficient with them, even if you hold them wrong, and some foods are easier to eat with them then with a fork or spoon.
I’ll tell you why. Because as a little kid, growing up in a small town in the middle of Ohio, I saw Jack Soo on Barney Miller using pencils as chopsticks and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. For years, I practiced holding pencils like chopsticks, waiting for the day that I could go into a Chinese restaurant (there weren’t any near where I grew up) and use 'em. It wasn’t until I was in college that I got to do this, so I’ll be DAMNED if I’m going to use a fork in an Asian restaurant when there’s chopsticks available!!!
The rice noodles used in many soup-style dishes are difficult to grab with a fork. They are often too short to do that fork-twirling thing, and too slippery anyway.
And even if you could do the fork-twirling thing, you’d only get the noodles on the fork, missing the meat, chopped-up cucumber bits, nuts, bean sprouts & mint leaves (I’m thinking of bún bò núong here). With chopsticks you can get a little bit of everything in one trip, with no effort wasted on mechanical wrist-action twirling.
Chopsticks are an extension of fingers. It’s equivalent to picking up chunks of food with your index finger & thumb. And if you’re used to them, just as easy.
I also appreciate a blunt wooden utensil in my mouth as opposed to a multi-pointed metal one, in case I happen to get the timing wrong and bite down on it.
I once looked around a Chinese restaurant where the patrons were approximately 50% American and 50% Chinese. I was amused to see that the majority of American were using chopsticks while an equally large majority of Chines were using forks.
I use a fork. Western culture happened to come up with a better implement in this case, so I use it.
Some food really is easier to eat with chopsticks, as others have said. Like Tsubaki, I find salad to be especially suited. Chopsticks are great for picking up bite-sized pieces of food, and in the case of leafy vegetables, it allows you to bunch together a nice clump of loose parts. If you stab a mouthfull of lettuce with a fork, there are loose ends sticking out from the side of the fork, and you get dressing in your beard when you eat. (Well, I do.) Chopsticks let you bundle it all together compactly, so it’s easier to get into your mouth. And when there are only a few pieces of salad left, it’s often hard to stab them with a fork. Lettuce lying on the bottom of the bowl in a puddle of dressing, for example. With chopsticks, you just pinch it.
I use chopsticks with chinese/japanese food simply because I’m not afforded the opportunity with any other meal. It’s a rather fun pasttime and a reason to look forward to having said food.
–Okay, Osiris, you just hit on something. Chinese rice seems to be sticky enough to clump…ideal for chop sticks.
American rice (not just Uncle Ben’s) seems to be dry.
Pho isn’t that hard to eat with a fork (unless most of the noodles are gone). For fun use bean sprouts to help give the noodles more stiffness(and it tastes better. More beansprouts = better pho). But chopsticks are better, i prefer them for whenever we have noodle dishes, but meat and rice based stuff i go for the silverware. And spagetti like i make biweekly has to be fork eaten, otherwise it is just wrong!
It’s hard to make a comarison, as they have evolved to suit different types of food. That said, I think I prefer chopsticks - to me they seem somehow more polite. I prefer to hold two slender pieces of wood in one hand to grabbing what seem like stainless steel surgical instruments with two hands. The downside of chopsticks though, is that people are tempted to use them for collecting food from the communal bowl (which, IIRC, is why Hong Kong has a relatively high Hepatitis A infection rate, compared to other industrialised places).
Because some of us were taught at a young age to use chopsticks as the proper utensil for such foods, and grew up doing so, even if we were barbaric, uncouth Americans.
You wanted to ask why they use chopsticks to eat Asian food
All the above reasons are fantastic. I use chopsticks because I grew up using them. They are as easy to use as a fork and knife, for me. Not all Westerners are clumsy with chopsticks.
hapaX touched on it, but I’m very surprised no-one else in this thread has.
It’s much easier to eat out of a small rice bowl with chopsticks than with a fork. Pick up the bowl with one hand and use the chopsticks to half-lift, half-scrape the food into your mouth. It’s a much neater way to eat (less food falls on the table or your shirt, since the journey from bowl to mouth is short) and it’s very efficient. Chopsticks are perfect for this style of eating. It would be very awkward to get a great big stainless steel fork into a teensy rice bowl.
Further, twirling pasta around your fork is fine, but twirling noodles is ridiculous and shows the diner would prefer to be scoffing spag bog than say, hokkien mee. All the meat and vegetables will fall off. It’s better to scoop up a small portion of noodles with chopsticks and enjoy all the flavours of the dish at once. Also, some Chinese wet-styles noodles are too short for twirling – you have to use a combination of chopsticks and a porcelein Chinese soup spoon and scoop the lot up.
I suspect “spag bog” was supposed to be “spag bol” i.e. Spaghetti Bolognaise. Hokkien Mee is a fine Singaporian/ Malaysian noodle dish. I’m sure the “funky Romanisation” thing is a common problem: I have no idea at all what Americans mean when they talk of General Tsao’s Chicken or Mu Shu Pork - either they don’t exist here or are known by quite different names.
I learnt to use chopsticks as a child visiting Asian counties where it was that or go hungry (oh, ok eat cold food with my hands). I use 'em now because the bastards won’t bring you the proper menu if you look like you used a fork to eat Chinese in the last decade.
My godfather was Chinese, so when he’d take me out to eat at a Chinese restaurant, it would be the type of place where (his words): “you be the only round eye in the place.” As a result, I got really good at chopsticks, so as to not embarrass myself. Now I can do almost anything with them that I can with a fork, although large slippery things (dumplings) are still tricky. I am proud of my chopstick skills, and using them makes me think of my godfather, who died about a year and a half ago, and whom I miss very much.
