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Ní hăo!
What do you do when you can't sleep and it's the early hours of the morning?? That's right, update your blog!
So this blog is a bit different from the rest. Instead of documenting what myself and Lucie have been getting up to in China, I wish to share my thoughts with you on one particular aspect of life out here. The use of chopsticks.
Now at first this may seem rather boring, and I thought so too at first. But I am now finding the topic rather interesting, so just bear with me.
Before I came to China, I was absolutely useless with chopsticks. Whenever I was offered them, I would turn them down if I could, or if I accepted, I would swap back to cutlery before I was halfway through my meal. When I discovered that Project Trust had placed me in China, I knew I would have to learn to use them, but I still had had very little success by the time I left the UK. And on arriving in China, our very first meal we had to use chopsticks for. Let's just say I didn't eat very much... (tiredness might also have been a factor, but I'm pretty sure my uselessness with chopsticks was the main factor).
Every meal, whether it be breakfast, lunch or dinner, we were nearly always faced with chopsticks (unless we bought off a street vendor, then you had to just use your fingers). I was not the only one who struggled. Out of the whole group, I would say less than a quarter of us were competent with chopsticks. Most of us struggled and just hoped that every mealtime we would actually get the food from the dishes to our mouths. (Actually, the way you eat when you go out for a meal in China is very different from the UK, that will deserve a blog of it's own).
By the end of our 9 days in Beijing, I did not dread mealtimes anymore, and I was actually managing to use the chopsticks slightly better (though it still took quite a bit of time).
I have now been here in Yihuang for almost 4 weeks, and I have got to admit: I love chopsticks! I don't really know when I realised this, but I do. Being me, I have done some research on the history and use of chopsticks, and I find it to be very interesting.
I think the use of chopsticks is rather elegant (when you are not dropping the food on the table or your lap). All the food is cooked in bitesize pieces so you do not need to do any cutting once the food is on the table:
"The honourable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table."
You just pick up the food and pop it in your mouth - simple! No sawing at the food, or stabbing it, just picking it up.
When we visited Rachael, Tazzy and Tanisha and Jiujiang, they offered us cutlery, Lucie accepted, but I turned it down! I never ever thought I would do that.
I think it is going to be hard going back to using cutlery when I return to Scotland, and I think at uni I might try and keep using chopsticks as often as I can!
Here is a quick note on how I use chopsticks (not necessarily the right way, but it works for me!):
- Rest the first (lower) chopstick in the gap between your thumb and first finger.
- Hold the second (top) chopstick like a pencil between the tips of your first finger and thumb.
- Place your third and fourth fingers beneath the lower chopstick so the chopstick rests on your third finger.
- Place your second finger behind the lower chopstick so it does not move left or right.
- Use your thumb and your first finger to move the top chopstick up and down, allowing you to pick up the food.
- (Note: hold the chopsticks further up, it actually makes them easier to use!)
There are also various taboos around the use of chopsticks, and I made sure I learnt these before leaving the UK!
- Do not stab your food
- Do not dig around in a dish for a particular piece of food - decide which piece you want before you put your chopsticks anywhere near the bowl, the pick it up, quick and accurately.
- Do not tap your chopsticks against the edge of the bowl - it is a reminder of what beggars do to attract attention.
- Do not stick your chopsticks into your dish and leave them so they remain vertical - this is a reminder of incense sticks at a funeral.
So here are my thoughts and views (and a little bit of research) on chopsticks. I hope maybe this gave you a little bit of insight into why the Chinese (Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Vietnamese) people use them.
Until next time,
Zàijiàn x
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