h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I thought you might know, Stuart! Sounds as if you spent some time in Asia. The last website you cite mentions gold chopsticks, and more impressively - jade! I'd be afraid of breaking them!

well, i actually got the different types of materials for chopsticks from a very reliable source, the h2g2 entry on chopsticks, which i will probably put a link to later today.

spook

link added.

spook

Hi there!

The reason why the Chinese don't eat with a knife and fork has already been outlined by Stuart's wonderful explanation

But on eating with one chopstick... very difficult...

Impaling food with chopsticks and then eating it? Incredibly unlucky and bad-mannered as this only occurs at funerals for the deceased in question. What you are doing is that if you impale the food, then you are wishing death upon yourself. Even worse, if you are to impale it into a bowl of rice and then offer the bowl, chopsticks-impaled-in-rice to a fellow diner, you are effectively wishing death upon them. The impalement of food at funerals is so the dead person is able to eat it with ease... suggesting to everyone:

a) the dead can only eat like this
b) the diner with impaled food is already dead, so you can't wish death upon them anyway...

So, the equivalent of sending a death threat to yourself or someone else at the dining table which probably wouldn't go down too well in polite society.

Caper Plip

u could use 1 chostick if u used small bowls and simply used the chopstick to shovel the food into your mouth. u don't have to impale the food with the chopstick even when u r using just one.

spook

Well, you wouldn't use just one chopstick. Whether it's possible or not isn't the point... the fact is you'd just look stupid...

As for impalement... well, it is the ultimate faux-pas in Chinese etiquette... you wouldn't do that... on the account of what I said in the previous post... and it is very much the case.

Caper Plip

do u think i should mention how it is bad mannered to use chopsticks to impale into the food in the entry, or is it ok how it is?

spook

Yes Zarquon, I spent a fascinating eighteen months in Hong Kong during which time I travelled around a bit getting as far as Tokyo. Although I was in the Army, I did live among the local population, consequently I learnt much of the customs of the Chinese.

Chopsticks made from the more exotic materials like gold or jade would only be brought out for special occasions like weddings and some religious celebrations.

One thing I did learn is that customs that may seem weird and bizarre to western ideas have a perfectly logical explanation, if you take the trouble to find out what they are.

Stuart

Well, it doesn't necessarily make Chinese food taste better... *but* if you impale-eat then I'm very certain that the tastes of Chinese people around you will turn quite sour... in that sense, eating with chopsticks facilitates the dining experience rather than the sense of taste

Caper Plip

ok i've just added one sentence about it.

spook

first off: nice entry.

Who mentioned Gold chopsticks? I know this is about Chinese food, but I spend a lot of time with Koreans and they use thin flat metal chopstics and a long-handled spoon. They get the food from their plate (or the communal dish) to their mouth in any way that is suitable for what they're eating, including spearing pieces of veg or meat with one stick.

I don't know if the Chinese do this.

well, i've never heard of chinese eaten like that before. i don't know if anyone else has though.

spook

Fascinating, Stuart.

My original T'ai Chi teacher, a wonderful man, was in the army in China and spent over 30 years studying and teaching it and used to teach different forms to different students at the same time. I don't know how he managed it. His wealth of knowledge was enormous, although you did have to have a great deal of patience and tenacity to study with him.

It had simply not occured to me to think that there was a philosophical reason for the Chinese to eat with chopsticks. Now it makes perfect sense.

Spearing meat with one chopstick does sound fairly barbaric. I can remember the pleasure I got from learning to pick up difficult things with chopsticks, like some of the things you get in a fish kettle.

*skips some backlog*

I see spook is following his tradition of maintaining sole credit by avoiding using the *exact* words of anyone in Peer Review. For an entry like this, which is such an opinion-based topic, it'd be great to have a number of italiced block quotes from a number of researchers who are either pro-fork and pro-chopstick. That would be more interesting, and more balanced. Ahh well

I don't really see the point of specifying only wooden or plastic chopsticks, or specifying only metal forks. I think the entry would work better if it just talked about forks and chopsticks in a general way. This would allow it to reach general conclusions about whether chopsticks or forks were better, rather than conclusions about two specific types of chopstick versus one specific type of fork.

Similarly, I'd scrap the subheaders. EG, for the section on 'shape', I'd have:

> "Shape is always very important. When you bite the food you feel the shape of the utensil in your mouth, and the shape you feel can greatly affect the taste of the food. With chopsticks, you only feel a small amount of the chopsticks in your mouth, just the small, thin ends. By contrast, the fork takes up more space in the mouth. However, the shape of the fork and using it as a scoop does make it easier to move more food into the mouth at once, as it has a much larger surface area."

Reason being, at the moment you're saying everything twice. IE, you say that the chopsticks take up less room than the fork, and then you say that the fork takes up more room than the chopsticks. This is wasteful.

Rather than talking about how to use the fork and chopsticks (in "Method" and elsewhere), it would be better to link to the two entries, and thereafter assume that readers are capable of using both, or at least understand the theory. Duplication is best left to genetic engineers.

Ditto earlier comments re "British" method.

> "Chopsticks should not be used to impale the food"

I'm willing to concede the point, but I was under the impression that this is culture-specific. Japanese chopsticks are specifically designed to be sharp and pointy so you can impale medium-sized pieces of meat or vegetable. Chinese chopsticks, by contrast, are blunt.

-Martin

thanks for the comments lucinda. i'll look into updating the entry later, however, i'd like to ask about one thing:

what two entries were u referring to when u said where to link to for mthod?

alos, about your first point, i would be happy to include some pro-fork and pro-chopstick comments in this entry. i hadn't thought about putting a section in about that before. if u'd like to make a specific comment to be included in the entry as your personal view, then please, post it in this thread. i'll wait for a few comments bere i update the entry tomorrow.

spook

the chopsticks entry (which you already link to) and A352784 - Forks and A558380 - Cutlery . A330968 - Knives is probably worth it too.

re: Personal comments - there are some good ones in this thread regarding (eg) speed, etc.

-myre

ok, i've put in a couple of comments, but a need a few more, especially a couple of pro-fork comments.

i've also removed the method section and just put a paragraph about that, and i've also totally taken out the material section, since if i'm just looking at chopsticks and forks in general, then material doesn't matter.

more personal comments please

spook

Rather than saying "it is this entry's opinion", which is clearly your opinion, why not write up what you think in block quotes as a pro-chopstick quote? I'm not convinced it's right for an entry to have an actual opinion...

Another thing you might want to consider is having the researcher's opinions scattered throughout the entry, at the most relevant point, rather than all in the same place. So, the comment on chopsticks being slower and thus better could be put under 'method'. Try it both ways and see which looks better

-Lucinda