Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. I have to admit that I love
Speaker 1: chopsticks and a kind of embarrassing in naive way. Like
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things about about eating several different
Speaker 1: kinds of Asian food is using chopsticks to eat them.
Speaker 1: I love like Chinese noodles with chopsticks. I love eating
Speaker 1: sushi with chopsticks. So sometimes I just eat sushi with
Speaker 1: my hands, as as you often do. Yeah. Um, But
Speaker 1: I love using chopsticks. I love it almost as much
Speaker 1: as I love the food itself. But I have found
Speaker 1: very strangely that I have a psychological block against using
Speaker 1: chopsticks on ethnic cuisines with which they do not originally pair.
Speaker 1: So I love using chopsticks, and I want any excuse
Speaker 1: to use them. But I've tried to eat spaghetti with
Speaker 1: them with like tomato basil sauce, and it does not work.
Speaker 1: It is psychologically revolting. But this is all ridiculous when
Speaker 1: you start getting into the deeper history of of any
Speaker 1: nation's cuisine. I mean, where do you think those those
Speaker 1: noodles in spaghetti and Italian spaghetti came from? That's a
Speaker 1: good point. They came from the East, they came from
Speaker 1: the land of chopsticks. And of course, one of the
Speaker 1: things we're gonna get gonna get into in this episode
Speaker 1: is that, you know, there was a time before widespread
Speaker 1: chopstick usage, uh in in Asia. There was a time
Speaker 1: before widespread noodle and dumpling consumption in Asia. And it's
Speaker 1: all part of the history of of of how we
Speaker 1: eat our food and what we eat. Right. So today's
Speaker 1: episode is going to be about chopstick technology, right. Uh
Speaker 1: So everyone I think is familiar with chopsticks. We don't
Speaker 1: have to really explain these too much. But there's two
Speaker 1: of them. There's two of them. There's sticks, there's sticks.
Speaker 1: Use your manual dexterity to manipulate food with them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, they may be made out of wood, bamboo,
Speaker 1: or they may be made out of metal or ceramic
Speaker 1: plastic in some cases, but it's it's a pretty simple
Speaker 1: concept and it it does allow an amazing amount of precision.
Speaker 1: I remember at an early age, I was really impressed
Speaker 1: by chopsticks, uh, in part because you know, we would
Speaker 1: go to little little Chinese restaurants in the in the
Speaker 1: States and when my family was living in Canada. One
Speaker 1: of my father's coworkers, Um was a Chinese Canadian physician,
Speaker 1: and he would use chopsticks, and he would let us
Speaker 1: use chopsticks. And there was a story he told when
Speaker 1: he was a child. If he was if he misbehaved,
Speaker 1: his mother would dump a small bowl of uncooked rice
Speaker 1: out under the table, give him a pair of chopsticks,
Speaker 1: and then he would have to um move each grain
Speaker 1: of rice with the chopsticks back into the bowl. That
Speaker 1: is amazing because that sounds like a punishment straight out
Speaker 1: of a fairy tale, doesn't it. That's like a fair
Speaker 1: that's like a Cinderella type punishment. But chopsticks, they are
Speaker 1: exactly the tool you would want to use to to
Speaker 1: carry out this task. I mean they they're just so precise.
Speaker 1: They even beat human fingers in many instances. If not
Speaker 1: in precision, then at least intact right because it allows
Speaker 1: you to Because so much of our our our our
Speaker 1: use of utensils, it's about how do you eat the
Speaker 1: food effectively, but also in a way that doesn't insult
Speaker 1: the people that you're eating with. Likewise, if you're eating
Speaker 1: hot food, which has been popular in human culture, um
Speaker 1: it it it behooves you to be able to handle
Speaker 1: that food without burning your fingers, and chopsticks allow you
Speaker 1: to do that, you know, when it comes to picking
Speaker 1: up individual grains of rice one at a time. I
Speaker 1: found out that there actually is a Guinness World Record
Speaker 1: category for speed in picking up and eating individual grains
Speaker 1: of rice with chopsticks. That's a that's a thing you
Speaker 1: can compete in. So you can go a like number
Speaker 1: of hot dogs in a minute thing, or you can
Speaker 1: go the number of grains of rice in a minute thing.
Speaker 1: Um And apparently the current holder of this world record
Speaker 1: is somebody named Silvio Saba in Milan, Italy, who was
Speaker 1: able to pick up and eat twenty five individual grains
Speaker 1: of rice with chopsticks in one minute in February, which
Speaker 1: actually that sounds kind of I feel like that record
Speaker 1: could be beaten. I'm just imagining it. And maybe so
Speaker 1: maybe you're the man to take up the chopsticks and
Speaker 1: give it a try. I mean, surely you can get
Speaker 1: down to like a second and a half per per
Speaker 1: rice grain, right, I don't know, who are we to
Speaker 1: doubt the Guinness Book of World Records, though, Joe, you
Speaker 1: know one thing is certain, though, when I'm using chopsticks,
Speaker 1: I often think about I mean just always impressed with
Speaker 1: these are great, and I do feel that temptation to
Speaker 1: want to use them on other foods. And really about
Speaker 1: the only foods that I when I think about it,
Speaker 1: that they don't make sense for so much are foods
Speaker 1: that require a great deal of cutting and carving. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking, like, if you're eating a steak, uh,
Speaker 1: you would need a knife. Now, I guess you could.
Speaker 1: You could use a knife and chopsticks, and that would
Speaker 1: that would work. But for the most part, chop sticks
Speaker 1: are gonna are gonna get you there with just about
Speaker 1: any food. You know, when you mentioned pairing a knife
Speaker 1: with chopsticks, there at least once was a product called
Speaker 1: fork and knife chopsticks. Have you seen this? There's like
Speaker 1: a promo obnoxious comedy promo video that used to go
Speaker 1: around the internet. Actually, it was a video where hilarity
Speaker 1: ensues when some Caucasian gentleman is trying to eat something
Speaker 1: with chopsticks. He just keeps dropping it all over himself
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, there was There's got to be
Speaker 1: a better way. And the better way is that the
Speaker 1: other side of these chopsticks are a fork and a knife.
Speaker 1: Oh so you can flip them around. See at first
Speaker 1: I think you meant that you're using them like chopsticks.
Speaker 1: But then it has a tiny fork and a tiny
Speaker 1: knife on the end because it's just you flip them around. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh no, yes, so it's stick party in front, fork
Speaker 1: and knife business and back. And actually they would like
Speaker 1: they would sort of hook together to make hinged chopsticks,
Speaker 1: which are not exactly traditional chopsticks. Okay, well that's not
Speaker 1: the worst invention, I suppose. Now. The promo video is
Speaker 1: really obnoxious, but the invention is fine. Though it looks
Speaker 1: like it's been discontinued or at least from the original
Speaker 1: seller as far as I could tell. Chopsticks themselves, however,
Speaker 1: of course, are still very much in production. They have
Speaker 1: not been discontinued. There's no sign of chopsticks going away
Speaker 1: anytime soon. In fact, I think I read about a
Speaker 1: problem with billions of disposable chopsticks being used every year. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: If anything, that the big take home is if you
Speaker 1: like using chopsticks, if you find yourself regularly using chopsticks,
Speaker 1: invest in a in a set of chopsticks, a mobile
Speaker 1: set that you can carry around and use it home
Speaker 1: and cut down on the on the disposable chopsticks. Now
Speaker 1: where did chopsticks come from? Well, they came from China
Speaker 1: and uh and as as we were talking about with
Speaker 1: our our researcher for this program, Scott Benjamin, they propped
Speaker 1: up prior to d b C, though some sources say
Speaker 1: they've been around for nearly nine thousand years. But uh,
Speaker 1: this is this is as cooking utensils, a way of
Speaker 1: moving ingredients around in on hot walk for instance. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to the use of chopsticks at the
Speaker 1: dinner table or you know, as a means of bringing
Speaker 1: food to your mouth, Um, sometimes you see it. Uh
Speaker 1: stated that we're really looking at more four hundred c
Speaker 1: e as A as A as A as kind of
Speaker 1: a rough, very rough time stamp for when it really
Speaker 1: began to become more popular and began to spread culturally,
Speaker 1: the idea that these are utensils that should be used
Speaker 1: to consume food as well. Now, as we'll get into this,
Speaker 1: this is not like a very this is not a
Speaker 1: super firm time stamp. It's not like you will not
Speaker 1: find people eating with chopsticks before that point. But this
Speaker 1: seems to be where the Levey really breaks on the idea.
Speaker 1: People do like to come up with origin stories for things, though,
Speaker 1: even when there isn't a clear origin story, well, that's
Speaker 1: often part of the fund right, is that there's not
Speaker 1: there's not an actual inventor, but there's a mythic character
Speaker 1: that had some sort of role in the invention, some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, cultural hero who stole fire from
Speaker 1: the gods, etcetera. Exactly. So we were both looking at
Speaker 1: a book, Robert, I think you actually read the whole book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a short read, actually, something like two
Speaker 1: hundred and something pages. It's a book by Q. Edward
Speaker 1: Wang that is called Chopsticks, a Cultural and Culinary History,
Speaker 1: polished from Cambridge University Press. And Wine points out that
Speaker 1: a common Chinese legend tells the story of how chopsticks
Speaker 1: were first invented by Da You, founder of the Shot dynasty,
Speaker 1: which ruled from twenty one hundred to sixteen hundred b c. E.
Speaker 1: And I've poked around for a couple of versions of
Speaker 1: this legend. Basically, the story goes like this. Da You
Speaker 1: was the figure credited with fighting the Great Flood of
Speaker 1: Chinese history and mythology by the use of dredging in
Speaker 1: the riverbeds and construction of irrigation canals to divert water flow. Now, Robert,
Speaker 1: you've talked about the Chinese Great Flood legends on podcasts before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you definitely comes up in in that episode. And
Speaker 1: because he's a he's a true cultural hero in Chinese
Speaker 1: mythology and the um. If I am remembering correctly, the
Speaker 1: the knowledge to to to overcome the flood was was
Speaker 1: actually stolen or obtained from the gods. I think by
Speaker 1: you his father, Uh, and then you himself is the
Speaker 1: one who really brings it to the people. I think
Speaker 1: that's correct. But so you eventually succeeds in defeating the
Speaker 1: Great Flood, and this made him emperor and founder of
Speaker 1: the Shah dynasty. But there are lots of stories and
Speaker 1: legends about how much he sacrificed personally and how tirelessly
Speaker 1: he worked on this project, uh, to to defeat the floodwater.
Speaker 1: And one of these legends is that day you had
Speaker 1: at one point had some meat sizzling in a walk,
Speaker 1: but he was in such a hurry to fight the
Speaker 1: flood that he couldn't sit there and wait for the
Speaker 1: meat to cool down enough to handle and eat, so
Speaker 1: he got a pair of twigs and he used them
Speaker 1: to pick up the hot pieces of meat and hurry
Speaker 1: along his meal so he could get back to work.
Speaker 1: But clearly this is just a legend, but still there
Speaker 1: it does illustrate, like the basic clever idea that the
Speaker 1: novelty of using just some twigs, some sticks, but using
Speaker 1: them using just found objects, but using them in an
Speaker 1: inventive way. Uh, that the changes the way you do things.
Speaker 1: And this is this is likely exactly how chop sticks
Speaker 1: emerged in just the darkness of prehistory. Is the use
Speaker 1: of found twigs, um, you know, maybe the twigs of
Speaker 1: him manipulated in some fashion, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: just a couple of found sticks that are used to
Speaker 1: manipulate food inside of a cooking pot. Or also the
Speaker 1: use of fire sticks, which would just be uh chopsticks
Speaker 1: that are used for moving burning wood or coal around. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that I think is interesting about chopsticks that
Speaker 1: is different from the use of say a fork or
Speaker 1: a knife, or even I mean sort of like a spoon,
Speaker 1: but also somewhat different from a spoon is that chopsticks
Speaker 1: in a way function sort of like extensions of the fingers.
Speaker 1: You know, they do a similar pinching action that you
Speaker 1: can do with your thumb and index finger, um, but
Speaker 1: they you know, they extend the fingers farther. They can
Speaker 1: handle hot stuff without getting grease on the fingers, and
Speaker 1: all that, they can reach into soup and pull out noodles,
Speaker 1: that they can do all that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: they in a way feel like a more natural extension
Speaker 1: of the the pinching, grasping action of the skeleton itself.
Speaker 1: They feel like more like they emerge out of the
Speaker 1: schema of the human body than say a knife, which
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have a knife, and you don't
Speaker 1: have any sharp fingers, you don't have a fork. Really,
Speaker 1: there's no stabbing sharp tynes on your hand, and there's
Speaker 1: just nothing analogous to a knife and a fork on
Speaker 1: your body. Yeah, I mean, this makes me realize that
Speaker 1: in grant granted, I probably I definitely use fork and
Speaker 1: knife more than I use chopsticks. And I am not,
Speaker 1: by any means a you know, an expert practitioner with chopsticks,
Speaker 1: But I do feel like I am far more likely
Speaker 1: to bumble and drop a fork, knife, or spoon than
Speaker 1: I am to bumble and drop my chopsticks. Like there,
Speaker 1: The chopsticks, to your point, are just more an extension
Speaker 1: of your body when you're using them. Now, obviously, if
Speaker 1: you're looking for ancient artifacts ancient evidence of chopsticks, Uh,
Speaker 1: just standard twigs aren't going to stick around very well, right,
Speaker 1: So you'd you'd be looking probably for chopsticks or indications
Speaker 1: that chopsticks were made out of other materials. Right. So
Speaker 1: for instance, um, you will find um like bronze chopsticks
Speaker 1: or what are believed to be chop sticks, and the
Speaker 1: tombs of the of the ruins of Yen in Hanan
Speaker 1: Province in central China. Because essentially what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here is a Neolithic invention. Like you said that the
Speaker 1: twigs are not going to stick around, there is evidence
Speaker 1: that suggests five thousand BC as a as a possibility
Speaker 1: for early archaeological evidence of chopsticks. So I've also read
Speaker 1: that the that some of these bone sticks from this
Speaker 1: time and earlier may also be interpreted as hairpins or
Speaker 1: or tools of another sort. Uh. But this is often
Speaker 1: a problem with like Neolithic technology, is it's not quite
Speaker 1: so clear what you're really looking at. It might be
Speaker 1: clear that an artifact is not naturally occurring and it
Speaker 1: was shaped in some way, but what was it used
Speaker 1: for not always clear. Because this is ultimately one of
Speaker 1: the confounding things about chopsticks is that it is a
Speaker 1: relatively simple concept. Uh. You don't need anything beyond neolithic
Speaker 1: technology to pull it off. And yet you don't see
Speaker 1: it emerging independently in other cultures. Uh. You know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: you just don't see it taking off everywhere, but it
Speaker 1: but it is a it's a cultural difference, and you
Speaker 1: see similar cultural differences in tool use among chimpanzees, for instance. Uh,
Speaker 1: nothing so grand as as chopstick usage. You will not
Speaker 1: find chimpanzees inventing the chopsticks, but you will see similar
Speaker 1: similar situation in things that are unessential behavior. You do
Speaker 1: not have to invent the chopstick in order to eat
Speaker 1: and survive and develop all the other technologies that uh,
Speaker 1: that the culture may develop. Uh. But uh, but but
Speaker 1: it is curious how we we see the chopsticks emerge
Speaker 1: in China and spread out from China, but they don't
Speaker 1: independently emerge elsewhere. Now, as far as evidence that twigs
Speaker 1: were commonly used just you know, snapped off branches and
Speaker 1: twigs were commonly used for chopsticks. Wang in his book,
Speaker 1: sites literary evidence from the ancient world that it was
Speaker 1: a common practice by say the third or fourth century
Speaker 1: b c. To snap pieces off of the lower branch
Speaker 1: is of a tree and use them for chopsticks. For example,
Speaker 1: he cites a passage from jun Z who lived three
Speaker 1: forty five b c. Uh and and jen Z says
Speaker 1: this in service of illustrating an unrelated point, So he's
Speaker 1: just like sort of using an analogy here. But he says,
Speaker 1: if you look up at a forest from the foot
Speaker 1: of a hill, the bigger trees appear no taller than chopsticks,
Speaker 1: and yet no one hoping to find chopsticks is likely
Speaker 1: to go picking among them. It is simply that the
Speaker 1: height obscures their natural dimensions. So he's not really talking
Speaker 1: about chopsticks in this passage, but it just sort of
Speaker 1: makes passing reference to the fact that you might go
Speaker 1: quote picking chopsticks. So we have in this an ancient tool,
Speaker 1: an ancient utensil for the preparation of food. The question then, is,
Speaker 1: how does it really leave the kitchen. How does it
Speaker 1: go from being just something that you use in the
Speaker 1: production of food to becoming the primary means of consuming
Speaker 1: said food, Because, for instance, many of us use a
Speaker 1: ladle in the kitchen, you know, or one of those
Speaker 1: of those deep seated uh spoons that that are that
Speaker 1: are just relatling out soup. You probably don't use one
Speaker 1: at the dinner table. You probably don't use it to
Speaker 1: drink soup. I eat with a spider strainer. Um, but
Speaker 1: that's that's another example. Yeah, you could technically do it,
Speaker 1: but you probably don't. Um. Speaking of spon's, spoons and soup, though,
Speaker 1: Wayne gets into this and he points out that the
Speaker 1: spoon was actually the most important eating implement for people
Speaker 1: in ancient East and Southeast Asia. I can see that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the spoon is going to be common to
Speaker 1: pretty much every culture, right because it is essentially just
Speaker 1: a retaining receptacle. You can move pretty much any kind
Speaker 1: of food. You could eat steak with a spoon, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I Actually I've given the choice between a fork
Speaker 1: and a spoon. I rarely picked the fork. I don't
Speaker 1: eat a lot of food that requires a stabbing fork anymore.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I'm more than happy with the spoon. Just
Speaker 1: give me the spoon. I don't even want to look
Speaker 1: the fork. The anything I can do with the fork,
Speaker 1: you can probably do with the spoon, and then of
Speaker 1: course I can do it even better with the chopsticks.
Speaker 1: But um, but the spoon was the most important eating
Speaker 1: an implement for for people in ancient East and Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: And this is backed up by both archaeological and textual accounts.
Speaker 1: And there are many reasons, some of these we've just
Speaker 1: hit on here, just the ultimate practical practicality of the spoon.
Speaker 1: But but something else that Wayne points out is that
Speaker 1: from antiquity up to the tenth century, millet was the
Speaker 1: dominant grain cereal in North China, Korea, and parts of Japan.
Speaker 1: And this particular substances best cooked into a thick gruel
Speaker 1: that that demands the attention of spoons rather than any
Speaker 1: other form of utensil. And boiling is key here because
Speaker 1: this was the age of boiling uh stews and soups.
Speaker 1: The this is what you ate chopsticks. They crept in
Speaker 1: is merely a supporting utensil that you might use to
Speaker 1: like stir around the depths to grab a few things
Speaker 1: out of the depths of your super stew, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, you're gonna have to depend on that spoon.
Speaker 1: By the tenth century, whing rights wheat becomes the primary grain,
Speaker 1: and so you get wheat noodles, you get wheat dumplings,
Speaker 1: and then chopsticks becoming extremely important because these are these
Speaker 1: make it far easier to manipulate those noodles or or
Speaker 1: dumplings if you've ever tried to eat, especially noodles with
Speaker 1: a spoon. But even a dumpling can become a complete
Speaker 1: comedy of errors if you're because of dumpling can tend
Speaker 1: to be a little slippery and you're trying to like
Speaker 1: balance it on the spoon. No, you're better off grabbing
Speaker 1: it with the chopsticks. And then from the eleventh century
Speaker 1: onward he writes that rice, of course becomes increasingly popular.
Speaker 1: Uh and since rice clumps, chopsticks can be used to
Speaker 1: great effect with them, oh yeah. And then and then
Speaker 1: in terms of of boiling well, by the third century
Speaker 1: he writes that you by this point you had cooking
Speaker 1: oils thanks to the millstone, that that allows you to
Speaker 1: you know, to break down the various seeds and whatnot
Speaker 1: that you're using to create that that frying oil. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to boil all of your ingredients. You
Speaker 1: can fry them. And this means more reliance on bite
Speaker 1: size ingredients rather than you know, giant you know, bones
Speaker 1: and meat that are dropped in with your vegetables for
Speaker 1: the stew. Yeah. And though of course not all, say
Speaker 1: Chinese cooking is the stir fries were familiar with or whatever,
Speaker 1: that is one common feature of many Chinese recipes is
Speaker 1: um things, you know, not a big hunk of meat
Speaker 1: on the plate, but things sliced into bite sized pieces.
Speaker 1: And the other thing about bite sized pieces is that
Speaker 1: they is that they cook faster, they require less fuel.
Speaker 1: This becomes more and more important, many commentators touch upon
Speaker 1: as as fuel becomes an issue. Right in Chinese civilization,
Speaker 1: there were points where suddenly, like firewood is more expensive,
Speaker 1: harder to come by. Yeah, so what are you gonna cook.
Speaker 1: You're gonna cook a giant slab of meat, or you're
Speaker 1: gonna cook little slivers of meat that have been prepared,
Speaker 1: of course in the kitchen and then and and and
Speaker 1: then then fried up and you can manipulate them with
Speaker 1: your chopsticks, uh, while they're cooking, and then of course
Speaker 1: when it comes time to eat. It is also the
Speaker 1: perfect implement to employ weighing. Also points out that in
Speaker 1: pre modern times, chopsticks also cut down in the risk
Speaker 1: of germs in communal eating. An interesting point. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if people are, say, picking dumplings out of a shared dish,
Speaker 1: you don't have to reach in there with your dirty hands.
Speaker 1: You can pluck them out precisely with chopsticks. Now, it's
Speaker 1: important to note in all of this that we again,
Speaker 1: we can't simply say that people created chopsticks in this
Speaker 1: age or that they begin to actually eat with them
Speaker 1: in another age. There's a lot of gradual change going
Speaker 1: on here, and there are some notable ancient accounts, uh
Speaker 1: accounts or legends or myths. So what have you of
Speaker 1: eating with chopsticks? And that's where we have to to
Speaker 1: discuss the lavish lifestyle of King Joe of the Shuan dynasty.
Speaker 1: He would have lived ten seventy five through ten forty
Speaker 1: six BC. Okay, take me there, take me to this
Speaker 1: ancient binge. He's best remembered as what's the party animal? Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely a party animal, a real blue do a real
Speaker 1: blue dough. Yeah. He he loved his his food, he
Speaker 1: loved the flesh, and uh and and so we have
Speaker 1: to keep that in mind that like, how much of
Speaker 1: this is accurate, how much of this isn't as an
Speaker 1: actual ruler, who would, who had a decadent lifestyle, and
Speaker 1: how much of this is of course just attributed to
Speaker 1: somebody who fell out of the good graces of history.
Speaker 1: But so, okay, if he's if he's a party animal,
Speaker 1: does he party with chopsticks? He does. He was said
Speaker 1: to have always eaten with an ornate pair of ivory chopsticks.
Speaker 1: And he wouldn't it was, it was strongly stressed that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't eat out of just earthenware bowls like the
Speaker 1: rest of the people. No, he would only eat from
Speaker 1: bowls of jade and rhino horn. Oh, rhino horn. Now,
Speaker 1: we've talked before on a different show on Stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind about ancient beliefs concerning the powers of
Speaker 1: the rhino horn, especially as it concerned people who were
Speaker 1: concerned with being poisoned like royalty, right. And then jade
Speaker 1: of course also has magical properties in in Chinese traditions,
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that that he would only eat
Speaker 1: from these because they would have been reputed to have
Speaker 1: some sort of uh focus on few food purification and
Speaker 1: poison prevention UH and ivory chopsticks would later going to
Speaker 1: become a symbol of decadent life and corrupt politics. But
Speaker 1: it went far beyond that. With with King Joe, he
Speaker 1: said to have had his own quote alcohol pool and
Speaker 1: meat forest. I stole the name of my restaurant. I
Speaker 1: can't open it now. It does remind me of some
Speaker 1: of these more decadent steak restaurants, you know, where they
Speaker 1: bring around like skewers of meat. Because this is described
Speaker 1: as essentially a lake of wine, and you would boat
Speaker 1: around in it, you know, with your concubines and your pals.
Speaker 1: And as you're boating around, drinking from the wine lake,
Speaker 1: you would also pluck cuts of meat from the roasting
Speaker 1: pillars that are around you, like a forest. This is
Speaker 1: like a satanic Charlie in the chocolate factory. It is
Speaker 1: this like unholy version of the chocolate rivers. He is
Speaker 1: also said to have delighted in eating quote the meat
Speaker 1: of long haired buffaloes and unborn leopards. I have no
Speaker 1: comment on that. Well, it's just it's a decadent diet
Speaker 1: to have, you know, only the weirdest and strange. Is
Speaker 1: this like uh, Monty Burns on The Simpsons wanting to
Speaker 1: wear the pelts of various exotic and endangered animals see
Speaker 1: my best Yes, yes, chopstick etiquette time. We just gotta
Speaker 1: have that jump in and invade whatever we were talking about, right,
Speaker 1: Just it will probably upset most people if you're eating
Speaker 1: unborn leopards. But also a point of etiquette here, never
Speaker 1: point your chopsticks at someone really yeah, like if you're
Speaker 1: you know, brandishing them at the table, you know, keep them,
Speaker 1: keep the direction down toward the food. That's generally advised.
Speaker 1: And also never stick your chopsticks upright in a bowl
Speaker 1: of rice, as this is a portent of death. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've heard that this is because chopsticks set a brighten
Speaker 1: a bowl of rice can resemble sticks of incense or
Speaker 1: chopsticks that are set upright in rice in funeral ceremonies. Oh,
Speaker 1: this makes sense, this is but this is something that
Speaker 1: would be very easy to miss for say a Western
Speaker 1: or traveling in China, which is why you see it
Speaker 1: cited in a lot of travel books. Do not do this,
Speaker 1: this is an easy thing that you cannot do and
Speaker 1: save yourself some grief. I always wonder about that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. When you see etiquette cited in books for travelers,
Speaker 1: It's like, is this a real rule or not? I
Speaker 1: feel like when you read those things, you've got to
Speaker 1: be reading some real common etiquette guidelines mixed in with
Speaker 1: things that people just made up. Well, I guess it
Speaker 1: depends on the faux pa they're warning you against, because
Speaker 1: some of them are more widespread and more central to
Speaker 1: a given culture. Like I instantly think of various taboos
Speaker 1: concerning shoes and Thailand. Uh uh, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: seated so that your your shoes are pointed against somebody,
Speaker 1: or or certainly any kind of situation where your your
Speaker 1: shoes are placed saying a bin at an airport with
Speaker 1: other belongings. But we need to save that for our
Speaker 1: episode in the Invention of shoes. At this point we
Speaker 1: should probably take a break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna discuss even more about the invention of chopsticks
Speaker 1: and just the the spread the spread of this cultural
Speaker 1: idea that this is how one should eat one's food. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, Robert divulged to me the wisdom of the
Speaker 1: Great Confucius as it concerns utensil etiquette. Yes, uh, this
Speaker 1: is this is interesting because this is where we find
Speaker 1: the connection between the great Chinese teacher, politician, and philosopher
Speaker 1: Confucius uh and chopsticks. Uh. Interestingly enough, I was just
Speaker 1: watching I just finally began to watch Michael Woods The
Speaker 1: Story of China, which is a fabulous documentary. He's done
Speaker 1: a couple of these before, one on India, one on England,
Speaker 1: and some other documentary features as well. But this is,
Speaker 1: like I want to say, it's like an eight part
Speaker 1: documentary look at the history of China and Chinese culture,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's really really good. You can find
Speaker 1: it on I think Amazon Prime currently and it's also
Speaker 1: on PBS in America. Um. But the first episode does
Speaker 1: a wonderful job of breaking down just how uh political
Speaker 1: core Confucian teachings really were governing the about how you
Speaker 1: know you've governed the moral character of a people via
Speaker 1: the ruler. So the ruler and and and his morals,
Speaker 1: they're the wind to the people's field of grass, dictating
Speaker 1: the nature of the people. Now, Confucius lived five fifty
Speaker 1: one through four seventy nine BC, a time during which
Speaker 1: we see the emergence of so many new ideas concerning
Speaker 1: human culture and the human condition. He's known outside of
Speaker 1: China as Confucius because this is the latinization of Khong
Speaker 1: Fuzi a k A Master cong Uh. And then we
Speaker 1: can we can hardly summarize his teachings here on the show.
Speaker 1: But but he believed that through study Uh, morality in
Speaker 1: virtue could win out over violence and tyranny. Ruling by
Speaker 1: example is better than ruling by law and punishment alone.
Speaker 1: His teachings, however, would only come to to widely influence
Speaker 1: Chinese rule and culture after his death. But his teachings
Speaker 1: did spread, and it seems so too did his ideas
Speaker 1: on eating utensils. He championed blunt chopsticks over the use
Speaker 1: of knives, and is quoted as having believed that quote,
Speaker 1: the honorable and upright man keeps well away from both
Speaker 1: the slaughter house and the kitchen, and he allows no
Speaker 1: knives at his table. Now it's unknown to what extent
Speaker 1: this impacted the actual use of meat in Chinese cuisine,
Speaker 1: but perhaps due in part as well to Buddhist influence.
Speaker 1: One sees meat used more for flavor flavoring, you know,
Speaker 1: the broth flavoring vegetables by around the first century. This
Speaker 1: is really interesting because the thoughts of Confucius here actually
Speaker 1: remind me of something I read years ago about chopsticks
Speaker 1: that has been lodged in my brain ever since. And
Speaker 1: I think it might be part of my love relationship
Speaker 1: with chopsticks. While I'm always looking for an excuse to
Speaker 1: use them, they feel morally good to me. Like something
Speaker 1: about using chopsticks isn't just esthetically pleasing, it feels virtuous.
Speaker 1: I know that that sounds quite silly, but I think
Speaker 1: one origin of this association in my mind is that
Speaker 1: when I was in college, I read a book called
Speaker 1: Empire of Signs by the French critic and sematician roll
Speaker 1: On Barth. It was first published in nineteen seventy and
Speaker 1: then in English translation by Richard Howard in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and it's kind of a semiotic travelogue of Japan.
Speaker 1: And I honestly, I don't think i'd actually vouch for
Speaker 1: Barth very good observer of other cultures in general, even
Speaker 1: for his time. And I think you could argue that
Speaker 1: there are traces of kind of orientalism and his thoughts
Speaker 1: about Asia. Apparently he was somewhat dismissive of the value
Speaker 1: of studying Chinese culture. But I read this book many
Speaker 1: years ago and Barth's thoughts about chopsticks always stuck with
Speaker 1: me as kind of more interesting and perhaps more valid
Speaker 1: than a lot of the rest. So here's some of
Speaker 1: what he says about chopsticks, and this is abridged selections
Speaker 1: from his book Empire of Signs. Quote. The instrument never pierces,
Speaker 1: cuts or slits, never wounds, but only selects, turns, shifts.
Speaker 1: For the chopsticks, in order to divide, must separate part
Speaker 1: peck instead of cutting and piercing in the manner of
Speaker 1: our implements. They never violate the food stuff either they
Speaker 1: gradually unravel it in the case of vegetables, or else
Speaker 1: product into separate pieces in the case of fish eels,
Speaker 1: thereby rediscovering the natural fissures of the substance. He also writes,
Speaker 1: by chopsticks, food becomes no longer a prey to which
Speaker 1: one does violence meet, flesh over which one does battle,
Speaker 1: but a substance harmoniously transferred. And then he says Finally,
Speaker 1: of people who use chopsticks to eat maternal they tirelessly
Speaker 1: perform the gesture which creates the mouthful, leaving to our
Speaker 1: alimentary manners armed with pikes and knives that of predation.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's beautiful. I like that comparison. It somehow
Speaker 1: rings true to me. I mean, it may be an
Speaker 1: over generalization of the differences between the two eating cultures. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Europeans fork and knife culture on one hand
Speaker 1: and and Japanese chopstick culture on the other hand, But
Speaker 1: I really feel like there's something something to what he's
Speaker 1: saying about the fact that when eating with chopsticks, one
Speaker 1: does not make artificial cuts in the meat or in
Speaker 1: the food in general as it is presented to you.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it might have been cut already in
Speaker 1: the preparation, but any separations of the food stuff's happen
Speaker 1: along natural lines of separations. So I can think about like,
Speaker 1: if you have a you know, a stir fried little
Speaker 1: head of baby bock choy on your plate and you're
Speaker 1: eating with chopsticks, the leaves come away whole as you
Speaker 1: peel them off, or or yeah, the fish flakes along
Speaker 1: the natural lines of its muscles. I have to say,
Speaker 1: with Bob Choy, I'm more inclined to try and grab
Speaker 1: the whole thing with the chopsticks and shove it into
Speaker 1: my mouth, which is I think an important point to
Speaker 1: make here. We talk a lot about the precision of
Speaker 1: the chopsticks and maybe the brutal aspects of fort knife
Speaker 1: and spoon. Um, but I we do need to remind
Speaker 1: everyone that you can still eat like an utter slab
Speaker 1: while using chopsticks. It's well within within range for for
Speaker 1: for for human behavior. Oh yeah, I would often say,
Speaker 1: even when you observe Chinese people eating, they often will say, um,
Speaker 1: bring the bowl up to near their face as they
Speaker 1: eat with chopsticks, And there's kind of like this beautiful
Speaker 1: shoveling action that that I think. I think it might
Speaker 1: be a sort of traddy. I don't know what's actually
Speaker 1: etiquette and what's not. I mean, I feel like Western
Speaker 1: tradition would say you don't hold the bowl up near
Speaker 1: your face. Well, this gets into two. Sometimes you hear
Speaker 1: it put forth that it's okay to slurp, Like slurping
Speaker 1: the soup in in in certain Eastern traditions is a
Speaker 1: compliment to the chef that sort of thing. I actually
Speaker 1: did have the experience once of getting noodles at a
Speaker 1: at a Chinese noodle shop in this was in Honolulu,
Speaker 1: I think, so it was predominantly Chinese clientele, and I
Speaker 1: was trying to eat consume the noodles, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: carefully and uh. And there was actually an older woman there,
Speaker 1: a Chinese woman who turned to me and basically let
Speaker 1: me know, it's okay to slurp, It's okay to bring
Speaker 1: the bowl up to your face, like this is this
Speaker 1: is all right, that's beautiful. Yeah. But anyway, but back
Speaker 1: to Confucius and to Bars. In both cases, there seems
Speaker 1: to be there's this idea that the method we use
Speaker 1: to get food from the plate into our mouths does
Speaker 1: have some kind of psychological conditioning effect. And I can't
Speaker 1: cite research to say that this is definitely true, but
Speaker 1: it certainly feels true. It at least it seems to
Speaker 1: make plausible sense. And I feel it myself when I'm eating.
Speaker 1: I feel a different kind of effect on my mind
Speaker 1: when I eat with chopsticks versus when I cut with
Speaker 1: a fork and knife. On some level, anytime I'm using
Speaker 1: a fork and knife to eat, I am picturing like
Speaker 1: a scene from a medieval motion picture. Of motion picture
Speaker 1: set in medieval times, not one made during the Middle
Speaker 1: Age is obviously, but you know, some scene of some
Speaker 1: brutal lord carving up his food while hounds a feast
Speaker 1: on the bones beneath the table. Um Like, I'm somehow
Speaker 1: employing that scene in my mind, but both negatively but
Speaker 1: also positive positively, because there's something kind of awesome about
Speaker 1: that scenario too. And then when I eat with chopsticks
Speaker 1: there is something bird like, Like I'm on some level
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that I am being fed by a bird puppet. Well,
Speaker 1: for me, fork and knife feels more um mechanical, artificial
Speaker 1: and architectural, and chopsticks feel more organic and uh related
Speaker 1: to the forms of the natural world. Again, they are
Speaker 1: more like the extensions of your skeleton. Yeah. But it also,
Speaker 1: as we were saying, coincides with differences in in common
Speaker 1: preparation methods, and say, many European traditions of cooking versus
Speaker 1: East Asian traditions of cooking were very often, though not
Speaker 1: always very often in say Chinese cooking, ingredients are sliced
Speaker 1: or cut up in advance. Yeah, and then this we
Speaker 1: come back to that idea that scarce resources and a
Speaker 1: growing population in China demanded that smaller portions of food
Speaker 1: be cooked faster over less fuel. Um. Thus chopsticks are
Speaker 1: an ideal way to consume the finished dish as well. Um. Though.
Speaker 1: One of the points that Weighing makes in his book
Speaker 1: is that you know, technically, you know that's certainly there
Speaker 1: are a number of key advantages to cooking food. We've
Speaker 1: touched on that and stuff to blow your mind before. Um.
Speaker 1: It is the externalization of digestion in many respects. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, do you have to eat it hot?
Speaker 1: Can you know? Can't you just wait until it's room
Speaker 1: temperature again and then you can eat it with your fingers? Uh?
Speaker 1: We often insist on eating and hot. We're not preferring
Speaker 1: warmer hot food. Um. I think there's some research on
Speaker 1: why we prefer hot food, right, is there? Well, that
Speaker 1: sounds like something we should say for a future episode
Speaker 1: on the invention of the hot bar. But in terms
Speaker 1: of like eating with your fingers though, uh. He Weighing
Speaker 1: summarizes in his book again at Chopsticks, a Cultural and
Speaker 1: Culinary History, uh, that we see the from fingers to
Speaker 1: utensils between five hundred and a thousand b C. And
Speaker 1: then we see spoons and chopsticks uses in an established
Speaker 1: set of eating tools in China between three hundred and
Speaker 1: six hundred C. So this this is the point where
Speaker 1: it becomes clear that if you're going to eat, you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna need that spoon because there are going to
Speaker 1: continue to be soups and broths and whatnot. But on
Speaker 1: the but on the other side of the plate, you're
Speaker 1: going to want those chopsticks because that is going to
Speaker 1: be how you can consume all of these finer pieces.
Speaker 1: Chopsticks and spoon. They are the Buddy cop movie of
Speaker 1: my mouth. All Right, we're gonna take one more break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to discuss the
Speaker 1: legacy of chopsticks. Alright, we're back, okay, Robert. We mentioned
Speaker 1: a little bit about random bits of chopsticks etiquette before.
Speaker 1: One thing we should point out is that there are
Speaker 1: definitely some regional variations on chopsticks etiquette. You know, the
Speaker 1: rules aren't the same everywhere you go. But some common
Speaker 1: examples that I've found reading about chopstick etiquette around the
Speaker 1: world would be One big one is you don't stab
Speaker 1: a food with the tip tip of chopsticks. Apparently that
Speaker 1: is just that's not cool. Yeah, that's one you have
Speaker 1: to you have to really break down for a child
Speaker 1: of when I was, when my own son was learning
Speaker 1: how to use chopsticks. I mean, that's you. You want
Speaker 1: to use them like the adults are using them, but
Speaker 1: it's difficult at first, and the first thing that comes
Speaker 1: to their mind is, well, I can just use this
Speaker 1: to stab my dumplings instead, and you have to say, no,
Speaker 1: do not stab the dumplings with that stick. It's like
Speaker 1: licking a knife. He's just you know, it just looks,
Speaker 1: it looks brutal and weird. Yeah, except when Dracula does it.
Speaker 1: You know, when Gary Oldman licks the razor blade. Gary
Speaker 1: Oldman can make anything look cool. But hey, here's another one.
Speaker 1: I read this in several places, and I wonder how
Speaker 1: common this rule of etiquette actually is. But what I
Speaker 1: have read in several places is something about Chinese chopstick etiquette.
Speaker 1: And it chilled me because I know I've violated this.
Speaker 1: I have done it. You know how some times you're
Speaker 1: eating a good bowl of some kind of stir fried delight,
Speaker 1: maybe it's some kind of noodle dish, or some fried rice,
Speaker 1: or just some kind of stir frying. You might be
Speaker 1: searching around in your dish for that one delicious thing,
Speaker 1: that big piece of black fungus, or that one last
Speaker 1: shrimp or something like that. Apparently, digging around with chopsticks
Speaker 1: in search of something can be seen as bad manners
Speaker 1: and is something referred to as quote grave digging or
Speaker 1: digging your grave. Huh. Well, on one hand, this seems
Speaker 1: like it's it's a it's a rule against over utilizing
Speaker 1: the freedom of the utensil. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it also makes sense if you're thinking about a more
Speaker 1: communal um eating scenario where you're sharing one big bowl
Speaker 1: or of one hot pot, etcetera. Uh it, it's cheating
Speaker 1: for you to go digging around and getting all the
Speaker 1: choice pizza pieces of protein out before anyone else can
Speaker 1: have a shot at them exactly. And also, I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is the reason, but I have to
Speaker 1: wonder if part of it is that it could be
Speaker 1: considered insulting to the host or the cook right implying
Speaker 1: that the dish only has a limited amount of the
Speaker 1: good stuff and there's not enough of it. And you
Speaker 1: want to dig around to find all of that. Again,
Speaker 1: it's the very thing you warn a child not to do.
Speaker 1: Don't just don't just eat the shrimp, eat the vegetables too,
Speaker 1: for the child's own good, but also so as not
Speaker 1: to insult the host. Right, because if you're just digging
Speaker 1: out the shrimp, the the implication is why didn't you
Speaker 1: just give me a bowl full of shrimp? Well that
Speaker 1: makes sense. That makes sense as well, but also another
Speaker 1: piece of head equipte that we can all take take
Speaker 1: with us because sometimes it is hard to resist again
Speaker 1: for that choice, uh, that choice delicious shrimp in there
Speaker 1: in the noodles. Well, I find myself maybe maybe this
Speaker 1: is bad manners in general, but I find myself in
Speaker 1: using chopsticks, especially just trying to compose perfect little mouthfuls
Speaker 1: of things like I want to get everything lined up together,
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a little bit of the
Speaker 1: carbohydrate element, a little bit of the vegetable, a little
Speaker 1: bit of the meat or whatever, and have that all
Speaker 1: just arranged just right before I shovel. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: then if you're like me, you run the risk of
Speaker 1: its slipping. This is my possible interpretation here, is that
Speaker 1: sometimes we try and treat treat the chopsticks as a fork,
Speaker 1: because with a fork, yeah, you can just go stab stab, stab, stab,
Speaker 1: and you get your little you know, taste sensation of
Speaker 1: four different elements lined up the one by buffet, right,
Speaker 1: But with chopsticks, sometimes when I try and do that, uh,
Speaker 1: there's it can be an act of folly because ultimately
Speaker 1: maybe I should be eating it piece by piece in
Speaker 1: a more chopsticks friendly manner. You know, one thing I've
Speaker 1: noticed when I watch I watch a decent amount of
Speaker 1: cooking videos with you know, actual chefs in the Asian traditions,
Speaker 1: like Japanese chefs, Chinese chefs, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: I see them using chopsticks still in cooking. We mentioned
Speaker 1: that they originally played a big role in cooking, but
Speaker 1: I see this still happening. They're like chopsticks used in
Speaker 1: a walk, chopsticks used for or say tempera frying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you will also see with with modern um,
Speaker 1: you know, gourmet chefs. Anyone who's ever watched you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of a Netflix cooking show hasn't has seen
Speaker 1: these gourmet chefs using tweezers, but in some cases chopsticks uh,
Speaker 1: to carefully align the food on the plate and make
Speaker 1: sure everything is position just right. Um, that's essentially the
Speaker 1: same principle. I mean, what are tweezers but less proper chopsticks.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen our coworker Dylan Fagin eating Cheetos
Speaker 1: out of a bag with chopsticks? No, I haven't noticed this.
Speaker 1: Gene Yes doesn't get any Cheeto dust on his fingers.
Speaker 1: He'll have the little bag there and he's going at
Speaker 1: it with chopsticks, and it's so cute, And I think
Speaker 1: it's it's it's culturally appropriate because because because cheetos are
Speaker 1: a snack with no nation, they're they're completely honorless. So
Speaker 1: it's okay to use chopsticks. If anything you have, you
Speaker 1: run the risk offending chopsticks. Now, a big part of
Speaker 1: chops culture in the world today is that we've got
Speaker 1: tons of disposable chopsticks chopsticks. Disposable chopsticks are being used
Speaker 1: all the time, and I am I am a big
Speaker 1: fan of reusable chopsticks, but I also admit I frequently
Speaker 1: used the disposable ones and feel bad about how many
Speaker 1: I've probably sent to the landfill in my lifetime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of the UH the research that was provided for
Speaker 1: us from Scott Benjamin. On this, he points out that
Speaker 1: disposable sets, typically bamboo, weren't really created until the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and UH and and this was largely a Japanese
Speaker 1: creation and today, UH, disposable chopsticks are a bit of
Speaker 1: a problem. In Japan alone, around twenty four billion pair
Speaker 1: are used each year, about two hundred pairs per person
Speaker 1: each year. That's a lot of waste. Yeah, but then again,
Speaker 1: UH less Western listeners be too judgmental on this fact.
Speaker 1: I just remind everyone to think about your disposable straw usage,
Speaker 1: think about your disposable for night, spoon and sport usage. Um.
Speaker 1: I think these are all part of the same problem. Oh,
Speaker 1: absolutely no reason to single out Japan here now. UM.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Japan, it's also pointed out that chopsticks were
Speaker 1: historically longer for men and shorter for women eight inches
Speaker 1: for men, seven inches for women, and the actual size
Speaker 1: of chopsticks varies now and it seems that there's no
Speaker 1: standard length for any one country. Another pro chopsticks fact,
Speaker 1: the blunt shape of chopsticks also makes them UH easier
Speaker 1: on lacquer covered ornate cookware. Again, you're not going to
Speaker 1: be stabbing and slicing with fork and knife on it.
Speaker 1: You're going to be more politely poking at them with
Speaker 1: the pieces of wood or in some cases of course,
Speaker 1: pieces of metal. Now, speaking of the materials used in
Speaker 1: chopsticks in Korea, metal chopsticks have have become the standard,
Speaker 1: but we also find various other uh substances, both currently
Speaker 1: and in the past, bamboo, plastic, wood, bone, stainless steel,
Speaker 1: us as well as for the wealthy titanium gold silver
Speaker 1: against porcelain, jade, ivory gold chopsticks. Yeah. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: also was once believed that chopsticks made of silver would
Speaker 1: corrode and turn black if the food was poison So
Speaker 1: this sounds like it's along the lines of the rhino
Speaker 1: horn and jade. However, of course this is not true.
Speaker 1: Silver silver will not react to arsenic or cyanide, but
Speaker 1: it will react to garlic, onions and rotten eggs. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are all things that produce hydrogen sulfide, which does
Speaker 1: turn silver black. Now a few other little tidbits about
Speaker 1: to chopstick use. Um Whang points out in his book
Speaker 1: that you had the chopstick diet Japanese English Arthur Kamico
Speaker 1: Barber argued in her two thousand nine book The Chopsticks
Speaker 1: Diet that using chopsticks is healthier because it forces you
Speaker 1: to slow down and savor and think about your food.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's actually healthier, but it does
Speaker 1: certainly force me to slow down and and save her
Speaker 1: food more. Yeah. Yeah, again, it's presented a waning presented
Speaker 1: it as uh something to think about, not necessarily fact. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also points out uh in fact, he points out
Speaker 1: several times this idea of the chopsticks cultural sphere. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was a term coined by Japanese writer Ishiki Hashiro
Speaker 1: and uh. He argued that chopsticks require enhanced brain coordination
Speaker 1: and that this improves not only dexterity but also brain development,
Speaker 1: especially in children. Now and Wang's uh points out that
Speaker 1: scientists have reduced quote positive results on both fronts, but
Speaker 1: that also lifetime chopsticks use might result in higher risk
Speaker 1: for osteoarthritis in hand joints among the elderly. More work
Speaker 1: is required in both areas, though, and perhaps this is
Speaker 1: something that we could follow up with unstuffed to boil
Speaker 1: your mind in the future. Yes, I definitely be interested
Speaker 1: in that, especially given what we talked about earlier that
Speaker 1: at least firsthand experience really makes me feel like chopsticks
Speaker 1: are doing something to my brain. So it feels like
Speaker 1: something different is happening to my mind when I use
Speaker 1: them as opposed to fork and knife. Now, chopsticks also
Speaker 1: show up in another interesting place in a now semi
Speaker 1: famous paper that is about the dangers of not understanding
Speaker 1: your sample correctly if you're a scientist and you're doing
Speaker 1: something like genetics testing. And it's a principle known as
Speaker 1: population stratification or population admixture that was discussed in a
Speaker 1: two thousand paper by Hammer and Serota called Beware the
Speaker 1: Chopsticks gene in the Nature publication Molecular Psychiatry. Now, the
Speaker 1: authors of this paper tell a story to illustrate how
Speaker 1: scientists can possibly be misled in genetics research if they're
Speaker 1: not careful. And the story goes like this, So Robert,
Speaker 1: once upon a time there was an ethno geneticist who
Speaker 1: was looking for a subject to study, and he decided
Speaker 1: he would like to figure out why certain people eat
Speaker 1: with chopsticks and others don't. So he rounded up a
Speaker 1: few hundred university students and he gave them questionnaires to
Speaker 1: find out how often they used chopsticks, and then he
Speaker 1: took cheek swabs to get DNA samples from each of them.
Speaker 1: So his lab ran DNA analysis and cross reference the
Speaker 1: responses to the questionnaire with the d N A and
Speaker 1: found a huge correlation between one particular genetic marker right
Speaker 1: in the middle of a region previously linked to other
Speaker 1: behavioral traits and the use of chopsticks. And so then
Speaker 1: this experiment was replicated. It was performed at several other
Speaker 1: universities and they all got the same result. So the
Speaker 1: original ethnogeneticist he celebrates. He decides this time to call
Speaker 1: up the media and tell them I've found the chopsticks gene.
Speaker 1: It is a gene that makes people prone to eat
Speaker 1: with chopsticks. And this, again is correlation. And as we
Speaker 1: frequently point out, is that one of the golden rules
Speaker 1: of science is that correlation is not necessarily causation. Right,
Speaker 1: anything that is causation should be correlated. But there are
Speaker 1: lots of things that are correlated that it don't have
Speaker 1: a causal relationship with each other, And this could very
Speaker 1: well be one of those examples because in this story,
Speaker 1: unfortunately the geneticist discovers only several years later that this
Speaker 1: particular gene is actually a histo compatibility antigen gene that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with dining utensils. But it just
Speaker 1: happens to be in a real that's more common in
Speaker 1: people with recent Asian ancestry than with other ethnic groups.
Speaker 1: So the point is to illustrate that you could find
Speaker 1: a gene associated with the trait. The level of statistical
Speaker 1: correlation can be highly significant, and the test can be
Speaker 1: replicated many times, and it's still possible that your results
Speaker 1: are biologically meaningless. This gene has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: how you use your hands or what kind of utensils
Speaker 1: you favor. It happens to be more common in a
Speaker 1: population who uses chopsticks more often for cultural reasons. It's
Speaker 1: a complete acident of culture, and it highlights a general
Speaker 1: problem with studying populations. If you don't understand and consider
Speaker 1: the population you're studying, it's possible to draw spurious correlations.
Speaker 1: Using similar naive logic. You could probably find a French
Speaker 1: accent gene or a support for Russia's World Cup team gene.
Speaker 1: You know this, This does remind me um of an
Speaker 1: early experience taking my my son to a Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 1: My wife and I were there with him, and uh,
Speaker 1: and he did not know how to use chopsticks at
Speaker 1: the time. He's now he's six years old and uses
Speaker 1: them extremely well. But when we first took him took
Speaker 1: into this Chinese restaurant, uh. Uh. The the the owner
Speaker 1: of the restaurant came around. He was saying hi and
Speaker 1: uh and of course he noted that that my son
Speaker 1: is is ethnically Han Chinese, and he said he pointed
Speaker 1: out to he said, don't let him use the cheating chopsticks,
Speaker 1: you know once where you and or he and she says,
Speaker 1: don't let him use those. Let him just figure it
Speaker 1: out because he has it in his d n A. Well,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a sweet story. But yeah, it operates
Speaker 1: on exactly the same principle, assuming that things that are
Speaker 1: actually just accidents of culture and history are somehow in
Speaker 1: the body, that there's something in the body that makes
Speaker 1: you that way, right, when really it is just a
Speaker 1: it is a it is cultural information. It's a cultural
Speaker 1: it's cultural knowledge that has passed on and uh. And
Speaker 1: in the case of learning, how to use chopsticks. I
Speaker 1: will say that his his advice was, I think act
Speaker 1: completely sound. Uh. My son used learned to use chopsticks. Uh,
Speaker 1: not by cheating and using some sort of rubber band
Speaker 1: h and a piece of paper rolled up. He used
Speaker 1: them by watching adults use them, imitating what they were doing,
Speaker 1: using them, you know, poorly for a while, and then
Speaker 1: using them with competence as an adult. I'm pretty good
Speaker 1: with chopsticks, but I did start using them at a
Speaker 1: slightly later age. I wonder if I had started using
Speaker 1: them at an earlier age, when I still had that
Speaker 1: neuro plasticity window open, you know, if I had started
Speaker 1: using them as early as I used a fork, if
Speaker 1: if they feel more like an extension of my hand,
Speaker 1: just kind of this perfectly intuitive part of my body. Well,
Speaker 1: we could easily come back to a lot of this.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of food left on the table, if
Speaker 1: you will, um, because indeed, like, how if you start
Speaker 1: earlier with chopsticks, are you in fact more skilled with them?
Speaker 1: And then there's the question of you know, why isn't
Speaker 1: chopsticks usage part of one's DNA? Like how long does
Speaker 1: something have to be around in human culture before it
Speaker 1: is part of our human genetic legacy. And then to
Speaker 1: what extent does does cultural knowledge, uh make genetic information
Speaker 1: less important? Oh? Well, you can certainly make that argument.
Speaker 1: I mean a big thing about what culture is is
Speaker 1: that culture is a great substitute for instinct You know,
Speaker 1: you don't need quite so many inborn instincts that are
Speaker 1: hardwired into the rain. If you have children who are
Speaker 1: born as learning machines and adults who can teach them
Speaker 1: what to do. Yeah, a lesson is learned by the
Speaker 1: individual in months, whereas it would be learned by the
Speaker 1: species across what a million years? Yeah? And I like
Speaker 1: that about us. I like that it's fun being a
Speaker 1: human because you can grow up learning to use fork
Speaker 1: and knife, or you can grow up learning to use chopsticks.
Speaker 1: You know, the brain works either way. If we were
Speaker 1: some kind of lizard that just had like a hardwired
Speaker 1: fork and knife nervous system, and chopsticks would never make
Speaker 1: sense to us. That would be a tragedy, it would
Speaker 1: it would it would be It would be a world
Speaker 1: without all these fabulous inventions, including chopsticks. All right, so
Speaker 1: they you have another episode of invention. We can file
Speaker 1: that one away and if you want to check out
Speaker 1: the files. If you want to see other episodes of
Speaker 1: the show, head on over to invention pod dot com.
Speaker 1: That is our website. You'll find the other episodes as
Speaker 1: well as links out to our social media accounts. And
Speaker 1: if you want to discuss the show with other listeners,
Speaker 1: we would recommend going to stuff to Blow Your Mind
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Speaker 1: we've talked about episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: but we're also happy to discuss episodes of Invention there
Speaker 1: as well. Huge thanks to our friend Scott Benjamin for
Speaker 1: research assistants on this show, and to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Torri Harrison. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future of Invention, or just
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