why do the chinese use chop sticks

[Thunderchild]

i recall being told it was because if they used knives and forks and they had an argument they would end up killing one another with the cuclry is this true ? or r they just easier and cheaper to make ?

[ann_h]

I think you'll find the chinese had chopsticks and crockery well before we came up with forks and were still eating out of troughs with our hands.

[Golem]

I think they were a natural development from the twigs and sticks that people used when they cooked food in boiling water or over a fire. As ann_h suggests, they've been around a long time. Also, Confucius was a vegetarian and influenced their use by saying, �The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table.�  which may be the background to what you were told.

As a side note, I visited Yunnan province in China a few years ago and was told that parents taught their children to hold the chopsticks in a way that expressed their hopes for the future. If the child was to remain close to home they would hold the sticks close to the 'food' end - if the child had better prospects by moving away to another district they would grasp them further along the stem.

On a further side note, a friend from the Congo prefers to use not chopsticks or cutlery, but "God's forks", which I thought was an excellent expression!

[Thunderchild]

I presume god's forks refers to ones hands ? well that is very interesting so there is a mixture of truth and myth. i thought that chopsticks were possibly the refinement of natural twigs.

[Ouisch]

http://www.mentalfloss.com/archives/archive2004-07-21.htm

 

According to the above, the Chinese began cutting up their food in bite-sized portions and using chopsticks to pick them up because of a wood shortage.  It took less fuel and cooking time to heat up the small pieces of food.  And chopsticks were made of bone or ivory at the time, not wood.