Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're bringing you a classic episode
Speaker 1: of Invention. This is our episode on Chopsticks. Is the
Speaker 1: show old enough to have classics? I think so? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Either way, we are patting this podcast out. We're making
Speaker 1: it possible to put out, you know, some strong episodes
Speaker 1: in the new year and not have to scramble. And
Speaker 1: this is one that I really had a great time doing.
Speaker 1: One of the key sources for this that will discuss
Speaker 1: in the episode is a wonderful little book titled Chopsticks,
Speaker 1: A Cultural and Culinary History by Q. Edward Wang. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend checking that out if you were at all
Speaker 1: interested in Chinese culture, Chinese history, or just Chinese cuisine
Speaker 1: in general. So this is our classic episode on Chopsticks.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Invention, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, do you hate
Speaker 1: as much as I do? The stock scene from movies,
Speaker 1: TV shows, commercials. It's everywhere of the standard clueless, clumsy
Speaker 1: Caucasian American guy trying to use chopsticks and dropping food
Speaker 1: all over the place sometimes while a little like Blue
Speaker 1: de Blue cartoon music plays. I don't think I've really
Speaker 1: witnessed it recently, so it's kind of it's kind of
Speaker 1: fallen out of my mind a certain extent. I tend
Speaker 1: to think of, you know, scenes from Blade Runner or
Speaker 1: something where where the Harrison Ford character, uh definitely has
Speaker 1: his chop skip sticks skills down. You know. It's not
Speaker 1: that I don't believe that there are adults in America
Speaker 1: who don't know how to use chopsticks. I'm sure there are.
Speaker 1: I mean, people have different levels of experience, and it's
Speaker 1: probably not easy the first time you do it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they exist at the highest level of US government.
Speaker 1: But I just don't think that this is particularly hilarious,
Speaker 1: especially in like the twenty one century. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was a scene we were seeing in in TV shows
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. It's on par with the scene
Speaker 1: where somebody goes to a sushi restaurant and they're like raw, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It seems like at this point you would be you
Speaker 1: would be on board with with sushi or or you
Speaker 1: would just not be in the sushi restaurant to begin with,
Speaker 1: and you would certainly be at least, you know, halfway
Speaker 1: competent with a pair of chopsticks. Even if you're not competent,
Speaker 1: it's just a thing that you have to learn how
Speaker 1: to do. It's like watching people learn how to ride
Speaker 1: a bicycle. It's just not particularly funny. Why was this
Speaker 1: once a source of much cultural hilarity in the United States?
Speaker 1: I imagine it was also pretty hilarious from the other
Speaker 1: perspective to you know, it's a bumbling Westerns trying to
Speaker 1: to use this very precise method of of of manipulating food.
Speaker 1: I have to admit that I love chopsticks and a
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassing naive way. Like one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things about about eating several different kinds of Asian food
Speaker 1: is using chopsticks to eat them. I love like Chinese
Speaker 1: noodles with chopsticks. I love eating sushi with chopsticks, though
Speaker 1: sometimes I just eat sushi with my hands as as
Speaker 1: you often do. Acceptable. Yeah, um, but I love using chopsticks.
Speaker 1: I love it almost as much as I love the
Speaker 1: food itself. But I have found very strangely that I
Speaker 1: have a psychological block against using chopsticks on ethnic cuisines
Speaker 1: with which they do not originally pair. So I love
Speaker 1: using chopsticks, and I want any excuse to use them.
Speaker 1: But I've tried to eat spaghetti with them with like
Speaker 1: tornato basil sauce, and it does not work. It is
Speaker 1: psychologically revolting. But this is all ridiculous when you start
Speaker 1: getting into the deeper history of of any nation's cuisine.
Speaker 1: I mean, where do you think those those noodles in
Speaker 1: spaghetti and Italian spaghetti came from. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: They came from the East. They came from the land
Speaker 1: of chopsticks. And of course, one of the things we're
Speaker 1: gonna get gonna get into in this episode is that
Speaker 1: you know, there was a time before widespread chopstick usage,
Speaker 1: uh in in Asia. There was a time before widespread
Speaker 1: noodle and dumpling consumption in Asia. And it's all part
Speaker 1: of the history of of of how we eat our
Speaker 1: food and what we eat. Right, So today's episode is
Speaker 1: going to be about chopstick technology, right. Uh So, everyone
Speaker 1: I think is familiar with chopsticks. We don't have to
Speaker 1: really explain these too much. But there's two of them.
Speaker 1: There's two of them, there's sticks. There're sticks. Use your
Speaker 1: manual dexterity to manipulate food with them. And you know,
Speaker 1: they may be made out of wood, bamboo, or they
Speaker 1: may be made out of metal or ceramic plastic in
Speaker 1: some cases. But it's it's a pretty simple concept and
Speaker 1: it it does allow an amazing amount of precision. I
Speaker 1: remember at an early age, I was really impressed by chopsticks. Uh,
Speaker 1: in part because know, we would go to little, little
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants in the in the States, and when my
Speaker 1: family was living in Canada, one of my father's coworkers,
Speaker 1: Um was a Chinese Canadian physician, and he would use chopsticks,
Speaker 1: and he would let us use chopsticks. And there was
Speaker 1: a story he told when he was a child. If
Speaker 1: he was if he misbehaved, his mother would dump a
Speaker 1: small bowl of uncooked rice out under the table, give
Speaker 1: him a pair of chopsticks, and then he would have
Speaker 1: to um move each grain of rice with the chopsticks
Speaker 1: back into the bowl. That is amazing because that sounds
Speaker 1: like a punishment straight out of a fairy tale, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: That's like a fair that's like a Cinderella type punishment.
Speaker 1: But chopsticks, they are exactly the tool you would want
Speaker 1: to use to to carry out this task. I mean
Speaker 1: they they're just so precise they even beat human fingers
Speaker 1: in many instances. If not in precision, then at least
Speaker 1: intact right because it allows you to. Because so much
Speaker 1: of our are our our use of utensils, it's about
Speaker 1: how do you eat the food effectively, but also in
Speaker 1: a way that doesn't insult the people that you're eating with. Likewise,
Speaker 1: if you're eating hot food, which has been popular in
Speaker 1: human culture, um it it, it behooves you to be
Speaker 1: able to handle that food without burning your fingers, and
Speaker 1: chopsticks allow you to do that. You know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to picking up individual grains of rice one at
Speaker 1: a time, I found out that there actually is a
Speaker 1: Guinness World Record category for speed in picking up and
Speaker 1: eating individual grains of rice with chopsticks. That's a that's
Speaker 1: a thing you can compete in. So you can go
Speaker 1: the like number of hot dogs in a minute thing,
Speaker 1: or you can go the number of grains of rice
Speaker 1: in a minute thing. Um And apparently the current holder
Speaker 1: of this world record is somebody named Silvio Saba in Milan, Italy,
Speaker 1: who was able to pick up and eat twenty five
Speaker 1: individual grains 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: out the Guinness Book of World Records, though, Joe. You know,
Speaker 1: one thing is certain though, When I'm using chopsticks, I
Speaker 1: often think about I mean just always impressing these are great,
Speaker 1: and I do feel that temptation to want to use
Speaker 1: them on other foods. And really about the only foods
Speaker 1: that I when I think about it, that they don't
Speaker 1: make sense for so much are foods that require a
Speaker 1: great deal of cutting and carving. Uh. You know, so
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like, if you're eating a steak, uh, you
Speaker 1: would need a knife. Now I guess you could. You
Speaker 1: could use a knife and chopsticks, and that would that
Speaker 1: would work. But for the most part, chopsticks are gonna
Speaker 1: are gonna get you there with just about any food.
Speaker 1: You know, when you mentioned pairing a knife with chopsticks.
Speaker 1: There at least once was a product called work and
Speaker 1: Knife chopsticks. Have you seen this. There's like a a
Speaker 1: promo obnoxious comedy promo video that used to go around
Speaker 1: the internet. Actually, it was a video where hilarity ensues
Speaker 1: when some Caucasian gentleman is trying to eat something with chopsticks.
Speaker 1: He just keeps dropping it all over himself and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there was There's got to be a better way. And
Speaker 1: the better way is that the other side of these
Speaker 1: chopsticks are a fork and a knife. Oh so you
Speaker 1: can flip them around. See at first I thought you
Speaker 1: meant that you're using them like chopsticks, but then it
Speaker 1: has a tiny fork and a tiny knife on the
Speaker 1: end because it's just you flip them around. Okay, uh no, yes,
Speaker 1: so it's stick party in front, fork and knife business
Speaker 1: and back. And actually they would like they would sort
Speaker 1: of hook together to make hinged chopsticks, which are not
Speaker 1: exactly traditional chopsticks. Okay, well that's not the worst invention,
Speaker 1: I suppose. Now, the promo video is really obnoxious, but
Speaker 1: the invention is fine, though it looks like it's been
Speaker 1: discontinued or at least from the original cellar as far
Speaker 1: as I could tell. Chopsticks themselves, however, of course, are
Speaker 1: still very much in production. They have not been discontinued.
Speaker 1: There's no sign of chopsticks going away anytime soon. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think I read about a problem with billions of
Speaker 1: disposable chopsticks being used every year. Yeah, yea. If anything,
Speaker 1: that the big take home is if you like using chopsticks,
Speaker 1: if you find yourself regularly using chopsticks, invest in a
Speaker 1: in a set of chopsticks, a mobile set that you
Speaker 1: can carry around and use it home and cut down
Speaker 1: on the on the disposable chopsticks. Now where did chopsticks
Speaker 1: come from? Well, they came from China and uh and
Speaker 1: as as we were talking about with our our researcher
Speaker 1: for this program, Scott Benjamin, Uh, they popped up prior
Speaker 1: to b C those some sources say they've been around
Speaker 1: for nearly nine thousand years. But uh, this is this
Speaker 1: is as cooking utensils, a way of moving ingredients around
Speaker 1: in on hot walk for instance. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to the use of chopsticks at the dinner table or
Speaker 1: you know, as a means of bringing food to your mouth. Um,
Speaker 1: sometimes you see it stated that we're really looking at
Speaker 1: more four hundred c as A as A as A
Speaker 1: as kind of a rough, very rough time stamp for
Speaker 1: when it really began to become more popular and began
Speaker 1: to spread culturally, the idea that these are utensils that
Speaker 1: should be used to consume food as well. Now, as
Speaker 1: we'll get into this, this is not like a very
Speaker 1: this is not a super firm time stamp. It's not
Speaker 1: like you will not find people eating with chopsticks before
Speaker 1: that point. But this seems to be where the Levey
Speaker 1: really breaks on the idea. People do like to come
Speaker 1: up with origins stories for things, though, even when there
Speaker 1: isn't a clear origin story. Well, that's often part of
Speaker 1: the fun, right, is that there's not a there's not
Speaker 1: an actual inventor, but there's a mythic character that had
Speaker 1: some sort of role in the invention, some sort of
Speaker 1: you know, cultural hero who stole fire from the gods, etcetera. Exactly.
Speaker 1: So we were both looking at a book, Robert, I
Speaker 1: think you actually read the whole book. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a short read, actually, something like two hundred and
Speaker 1: something pages. It's a book by Q. Edward Wang that
Speaker 1: is called Chopsticks, a Cultural and Culinary History, polished from
Speaker 1: Cambridge University Press. And Wine points out that a common
Speaker 1: Chinese legend tells the story of how chopsticks were first
Speaker 1: invented by Da You, founder of the Shah dynasty which
Speaker 1: 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 here 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 as 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 floodwaters.
Speaker 1: And one of these legends is that day had at
Speaker 1: one point had some meat sizzling in a walk, but
Speaker 1: he was in such a hurry to fight the flood
Speaker 1: that he couldn't sit there and wait for the meat
Speaker 1: to cool down enough to handle and eat. So he
Speaker 1: got a pair of twigs and he used them to
Speaker 1: pick up the hot pieces of meat and hurry along
Speaker 1: his meal so he could back to work. But clearly
Speaker 1: this is just a legend, but still there it does illustrate,
Speaker 1: like the basic clever idea that the novelty of using
Speaker 1: just some twigs some sticks, but using them, using just
Speaker 1: found objects, but using them in an inventive way, uh
Speaker 1: that the changes the way you do things. And this
Speaker 1: is this is likely exactly how chopsticks emerged in just
Speaker 1: the darkness of prehistory. Is the use of found twigs um.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe the twigs of the manipulated in some fashion,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, just a couple of found
Speaker 1: sticks that are used to manipulate food inside of a
Speaker 1: cooking pot. Or also the use of fire sticks, which
Speaker 1: would just be uh, chopsticks that are used for moving
Speaker 1: burning wood or coal around. Now, one thing that I
Speaker 1: think is interesting about chopsticks that is different from the
Speaker 1: use of say a fork or a knife, or even
Speaker 1: I mean sort of like a spoon, but also somewhat
Speaker 1: different from a spoon, is that chopsticks in a way
Speaker 1: function sort of like extensions of the fingers. You know,
Speaker 1: they do a similar pinching action that you can do
Speaker 1: with your thumb and index finger, um, but they you know,
Speaker 1: they extend the fingers farther. They can handle hot stuff
Speaker 1: without getting grease on the fingers, and all that, they
Speaker 1: can reach into soup and pull out noodles, that they
Speaker 1: can do all that kind of stuff. But they in
Speaker 1: a way feel like a more natural extension of the pinching,
Speaker 1: grasping action of the skeleton itself. They feel like more
Speaker 1: like they emerge out of the schema of the human
Speaker 1: body than say a knife, which you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have a knife, and you don't have any sharp fingers,
Speaker 1: you don't have a fork. Really, there's no stabbing sharp
Speaker 1: tynes on your hand, and there's just nothing analogous to
Speaker 1: a knife and a fork on your body. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this makes me realize that in grant granted, I
Speaker 1: probably I definitely use fork and knife more than I
Speaker 1: use chopsticks. And I am not, by any mean as
Speaker 1: a you know, an expert practitioner with chopsticks, But I
Speaker 1: do feel like I am far more likely to bumble
Speaker 1: and drop a fork, knife, or spoon than I am
Speaker 1: to bumble and drop my chopsticks. Like they're the chopsticks,
Speaker 1: to your point, are just more an extension of your
Speaker 1: body when you're using them. Now, obviously, if you're looking
Speaker 1: for ancient artifacts ancient evidence of chopsticks, uh, just standard
Speaker 1: twigs aren't going to stick around very well, right, So
Speaker 1: you'd you'd be looking probably for chopsticks or indications that
Speaker 1: chopsticks were made out of other materials. Right. So for instance, um,
Speaker 1: you will find um like bronze chopsticks or what are
Speaker 1: believed to be chopsticks in the tombs of the of
Speaker 1: the ruins of Yin in Henan Province in Central China.
Speaker 1: Because essentially what we're talking about here is a Neolithic invention.
Speaker 1: Like you said, the twigs are not going to stick around.
Speaker 1: There is evidence that suggests five thousand BC as a
Speaker 1: as a possibility for early archaeological evidence of chopsticks. So
Speaker 1: I've also read that some of these bones sticks from
Speaker 1: this time and earlier may also be interpreted as hairpins
Speaker 1: or or tools of another sort. Uh. But this is
Speaker 1: often a problem with like Neolithic technology, is it's not
Speaker 1: quite so clear what you're really looking at. It might
Speaker 1: be clear that an artifact is not naturally occurring and
Speaker 1: it was shaped in some way, but what was it
Speaker 1: used for not always clear. Because this is ultimately one
Speaker 1: of the confounding things about chopsticks is that it is
Speaker 1: a relatively simple concept. Uh. You don't need anything beyond
Speaker 1: Neolithic technology to pull it off. And yet you don't
Speaker 1: see 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 used, 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 a culture may develop. Uh. But but but it
Speaker 1: is curious how we we see the chopsticks emerge in
Speaker 1: China and spread out from China, but they don't independently
Speaker 1: emerge elsewhere. Now, as far as evidence that twigs were
Speaker 1: commonly used just you know, snapped off branches and twigs
Speaker 1: were commonly used for chopsticks, Whang in his book sites
Speaker 1: literary evidence from the ancient world that it was a
Speaker 1: common practice by say the third or fourth century b
Speaker 1: c e. To snap pieces off of the lower branches
Speaker 1: of a tree and use them for chopsticks. And for example,
Speaker 1: he cites a passage from jun Z who lived three
Speaker 1: forty to forty five b c. Uh And and jen
Speaker 1: Z says this in service of illustrating an unrelated point.
Speaker 1: So he's just like sort of using an analogy here.
Speaker 1: But he says, if you look up at a forest
Speaker 1: from the foot of a hill. The bigger tree is
Speaker 1: appear no taller than chopsticks, and yet no one hoping
Speaker 1: to find chopsticks is likely to go picking among them.
Speaker 1: It is simply that the height obscures their natural dimensions.
Speaker 1: So he's not really talking about chopsticks in this passage,
Speaker 1: but it just sort of makes passing reference to the
Speaker 1: fact that you might go quote picking chopsticks. So it
Speaker 1: becomes difficult to really like nail down when people started
Speaker 1: using chopsticks in cooking. So we have in this an
Speaker 1: ancient tool, an ancient utensil for the preparation of food.
Speaker 1: The question then is how does it really leave the kitchen?
Speaker 1: How does it go from being just something that you
Speaker 1: use in the production of food to becoming the primary
Speaker 1: means of consuming said food, Because, for instance, many of
Speaker 1: us use a ladle in the kitchen. You know, one
Speaker 1: of those you know, those deep seated uh spoons that
Speaker 1: that are that are just reladling out soup. You probably
Speaker 1: don't use one at the dinner table. You probably don't
Speaker 1: use it to drink soup. I eat with a spider strainer. Um,
Speaker 1: But that's that's another example. Yeah, you could technically do it,
Speaker 1: but you probably don't. Um. Speaking of spoon'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. I mean you can move pretty much
Speaker 1: any kind of food. You could eat steak with the spoon, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I Actually you'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: at 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 that we've
Speaker 1: just hit on here. Just the ultimate practical practicality of
Speaker 1: the spoon. But but something else that Whining points out
Speaker 1: is that from antiquity up to the tenth century, millet
Speaker 1: was the dominant grain cereal in North China, Korea, and
Speaker 1: parts of Japan. And this particular substances best cooked into
Speaker 1: a thick gruel that that demands the attention of spoons
Speaker 1: rather than any other form of utensil. So, yeah, try
Speaker 1: to imagine eating like oatmeal with chopsticks. You could do it,
Speaker 1: It's just not the best thing to use, right, And
Speaker 1: you might say, well, what's the different how about rice?
Speaker 1: How's rice difference? What rice clumps up? Rice is different?
Speaker 1: I mean, if you are eating rice that you cannot
Speaker 1: eat with chopsticks, you're probably eating the wrong rice. Well
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily true. I mean, so like sometimes bosmati rice,
Speaker 1: which is wonderful, doesn't clump together the same way like
Speaker 1: a jasmine rice would. But yeah, I guess what I
Speaker 1: had in mind when I was insulting rice was like
Speaker 1: par boiled rice, which maintains very distinct individual grains and
Speaker 1: is yeah right, and uh and boiling is key here
Speaker 1: because 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, weighing 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 contend to
Speaker 1: be a little slippery and you're trying to like balance
Speaker 1: it on the spoon. No, you're better off grabbing it
Speaker 1: with the chopsticks. And then from the eleven and century onward,
Speaker 1: he writes that rice, of course becomes increasingly popular. Uh
Speaker 1: and since rice clumps, chopsticks can be used a great
Speaker 1: effect with them. Oh yeah, And then and then in
Speaker 1: terms of of boiling well. By the third century, he
Speaker 1: writes that you by this point you had cooking oils
Speaker 1: thanks to the millstone. That that allows you to you know,
Speaker 1: to break down the various seeds and whatnot that you're
Speaker 1: 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 grad will change
Speaker 1: going on here, and there are some notable ancient accounts,
Speaker 1: uh accounts or legends or myths. So what have you
Speaker 1: of eating with chopsticks? And that's where we have to
Speaker 1: to discuss the lavish lifestyle of King Joe of the
Speaker 1: Shuan dynasty. He would have lived ten seventy five through
Speaker 1: ten forty six b C. Okay, take me there, take
Speaker 1: me to this ancient binge. All right, So he established
Speaker 1: somewhat of a reputation. He's best remembered ash what's the
Speaker 1: term party animal? Yeah, definitely a party animal, A real
Speaker 1: blue do, a real blue do. Yeah. He he loved
Speaker 1: his his food, he loved the flesh, and uh and
Speaker 1: and so we have to keep that in mind that like,
Speaker 1: how much of this is accurate, how much of this
Speaker 1: isn't as an actual ruler, who would, who had a
Speaker 1: decadent lifestyle? And how much of this is of course
Speaker 1: just attributed to somebody who fell out of the good
Speaker 1: graces of history. But so, okay, if he's if he's
Speaker 1: a party animal, does he party with chopsticks? He does.
Speaker 1: He was said to have always eaten with an ornate
Speaker 1: pair of ivory chopsticks. And he wouldn't it was it
Speaker 1: was strongly stressed that he wouldn't eat out of just
Speaker 1: earthenware bowls like the rest of the people. No, he
Speaker 1: would only eat from bowls of jade and rhino horn. Oh,
Speaker 1: rhino horn. Now we've talked before on a different show
Speaker 1: on stuff to blow your mind about ancient beliefs concerning
Speaker 1: the powers of the rhino horn, especially as it concerned
Speaker 1: people who were concerned with being poisoned like royalty. Right yeah.
Speaker 1: And then jade of course also has magical properties in
Speaker 1: in Chinese traditions, so it makes sense that that he
Speaker 1: would only eat from these because they would have been
Speaker 1: reputed to have some sort of uh focus on few
Speaker 1: food purification and poison prevention UH and ivory chopsticks would
Speaker 1: later go on to become a symbol of deconant life
Speaker 1: and corrupt politics. But it went far beyond that with
Speaker 1: with King Joe, he said to have had his own
Speaker 1: quote alcohol pool and meat forest. I stole the name
Speaker 1: of my restaurant. I can't open it now. It does
Speaker 1: remind me of some of these more decadent steak restaurants,
Speaker 1: you know, where they bring around like skewers of meat.
Speaker 1: Because this is described as essentially a lake of wine,
Speaker 1: and you would boat around in it, you know, with
Speaker 1: your concubines and your pals. And as you're boating around
Speaker 1: drinking from the wine lake, you would also pluck cuts
Speaker 1: of meat from the roasting pillars that are around you,
Speaker 1: like a forest. This is like a Satanic Charlie in
Speaker 1: the chocolate factory. It is this like unholy version of
Speaker 1: the chocolate Rivers. He is also said to have delighted
Speaker 1: in eating quote, the meat of long haired buffaloes and
Speaker 1: unborn leopards. I have no comment on that. Well, it's
Speaker 1: just it's a decadent diet to have, you know, only
Speaker 1: the weirdest and the strangest. It's like uh, Monty Burns
Speaker 1: on The Simpsons wanting to wear the pelts of various
Speaker 1: exotic and endangered animals see my best Yes, yes, dude, dude,
Speaker 1: chopstick etiquette time. We just gotta have that jump in
Speaker 1: and invade whatever we were talking about, right, just it
Speaker 1: will probably upset most people if you're eating unborn leopards.
Speaker 1: But also a point of etiquette here, never point your
Speaker 1: chopsticks at someone really yeah, like if you're you know,
Speaker 1: brandishing them at the table, you know, keep them, keep
Speaker 1: the direction down toward the food. That's generally advised. And
Speaker 1: also never stick your chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice,
Speaker 1: as this is a portent of death. Yes, I've heard that.
Speaker 1: This is because chopsticks set upright in a bowl of
Speaker 1: rice can resemble sticks of incense or chopsticks that are
Speaker 1: set upright in rice in funeral ceremonies. Oh, this makes sense.
Speaker 1: This is but this is something that would be very
Speaker 1: easy to miss for let's say a Western or traveling
Speaker 1: in China, which is why you see it cited in
Speaker 1: a lot of travel books. Do not do this. This
Speaker 1: is an easy thing that you cannot do and save
Speaker 1: yourself some grief. I always wonder about that kind of
Speaker 1: 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 episode.
Speaker 1: In the invention of shoes. At this point, we should
Speaker 1: probably take a break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna discuss even more about the invention of chopsticks and
Speaker 1: just the the spread, the spread of this cultural idea
Speaker 1: that this is how one should eat one's food. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. Robert divulged to me the wisdom of the
Speaker 1: Great Confucius as it concerns utense el etiquette. Yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is this is interesting because this is where we
Speaker 1: find the connection between the great Chinese teacher, politician, and
Speaker 1: philosopher Confucius uh and shopsticks. UH. Interestingly enough, I was
Speaker 1: just watching Uh. I just finally began to watch Michael
Speaker 1: Woods The Story of China, which is a fabulous documentary.
Speaker 1: He's done a couple of these before, one on India,
Speaker 1: one on England, uh, and some other documentary features as well.
Speaker 1: But this is, like I want to say, it's like
Speaker 1: an eight part documentary look at the history of China
Speaker 1: and Chinese culture, and it's it's it's really really good.
Speaker 1: You can find it on I think Amazon Prime currently
Speaker 1: and it's also on PBS in America. UM. But the
Speaker 1: first episode does a wonderful job of breaking it down
Speaker 1: just how political core Confucian teachings really were governing the
Speaker 1: about how you know you've governed them moral character of
Speaker 1: a people via the ruler. So the ruler and in
Speaker 1: his morals, they're the wind to the people's field of grass,
Speaker 1: dictating the nature of the people. Oh, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like our our modern Western sensibilities kind of well, actually,
Speaker 1: they're pushing me both ways on that, because on one hand,
Speaker 1: there's this sort of there's this very American tradition that says,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, we don't let leaders define us. We
Speaker 1: say what the leaders should be. But then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, I think I've read that there is some
Speaker 1: pretty recent research in political science finding that very often
Speaker 1: people's opinions about about subjects that are controversial and politics
Speaker 1: are mostly shaped by what their leaders believe. There are
Speaker 1: a few issues that people have firm opinions on, most things,
Speaker 1: they just believe what the people they have designated their
Speaker 1: leaders in their cultural in group elites say. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this lines up rather well with Confucian idea. Is
Speaker 1: now Confucius lived five fifty one through four seventy nine BC,
Speaker 1: a time during which we see the emergence of so
Speaker 1: many new ideas concerning human culture and the human condition.
Speaker 1: He's known outside of China as Confucius because this is
Speaker 1: the latinization of Khong Fuzi a k A Master Kong Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we can we can hardly summarize his teachings
Speaker 1: here on the show. But but he believed that through
Speaker 1: study Uh, morality in virtue could win out over violence
Speaker 1: and tyranny. Ruling by example is better than ruling by
Speaker 1: law and punishment alone. His teachings, however, would only come
Speaker 1: to to widely influence Chinese rule and culture after his death.
Speaker 1: But his teachings did spread, and it seems so too
Speaker 1: did his ideas on eating utensils. He championed blunt chopsticks
Speaker 1: over the use of knives, and is quoted as having
Speaker 1: believed that quote, the honorable and upright man keeps well
Speaker 1: away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen, and he
Speaker 1: allows no knives at his table. Now it's unknown to
Speaker 1: what extent this impacted the actual use of meat in
Speaker 1: Chinese cuisine, but perhaps do in part as well to
Speaker 1: Buddhist influence, one sees meat used more for flavor flavoring,
Speaker 1: you know, the broth flavoring vegetables by around the first century.
Speaker 1: This is really interesting because the thoughts of Confucius here
Speaker 1: actually remind me of something I read years ago about
Speaker 1: chopsticks that has been lodged in my brain ever since.
Speaker 1: And I think it might be part of my love
Speaker 1: relationship with chopsticks. While I'm always looking for an excuse
Speaker 1: to use them, they feel morally good to me. Like
Speaker 1: something 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: Pire of Signs by the French critic and semiotician 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 Barth,
Speaker 1: this 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 more thoughtful than
Speaker 1: than a lot of the rest. It's kind of more
Speaker 1: more interesting and perhaps more valid than a lot of
Speaker 1: the rest. So here's some of what he says about chopsticks,
Speaker 1: and this is abridged selections from his book Empire of Signs. Quote.
Speaker 1: The instrument never pierces, cuts or slits, never wounds, but
Speaker 1: only selects, turns, shifts. For the chopsticks, in order to divide,
Speaker 1: must separate part peck instead of cutting and piercing in
Speaker 1: the manner of our implements. They never violate the food stuff,
Speaker 1: either they gradually unravel it in the case of vegetables,
Speaker 1: or else prod it into separate pieces in the case
Speaker 1: of fish eels, thereby rediscovering the natural fissures of the substance.
Speaker 1: He also writes, by chopsticks, food becomes no longer a
Speaker 1: prey to which one does violence meet, flesh over which
Speaker 1: one does battle, but a substance harmoniously transferred. And then
Speaker 1: he says Finally, of people who use chopsticks to eat
Speaker 1: maternal they tirelessly perform the gesture which creates the mouthful,
Speaker 1: leaving to our alimentary manners armed with pikes and knives
Speaker 1: that of predation. Well, that's beautiful. I like that comparison.
Speaker 1: It somehow rings true to me. I mean, it may
Speaker 1: be an over generalization of the differences between the two
Speaker 1: eating cultures. Uh, you know, Europeans fork and knife culture
Speaker 1: on one hand and and Japanese chopstick culture on the
Speaker 1: other hand, But I really feel like there's something something
Speaker 1: to what he's saying about the fact that when eating
Speaker 1: with chopsticks, one does not make artificial cuts in the
Speaker 1: meat or in the food in general as it is
Speaker 1: presented to you. It's you know, it might have been
Speaker 1: cut already in the preparation, but any separations of the
Speaker 1: food stuff's happen along natural lines of separation. So I
Speaker 1: can think about like, if you have a you know,
Speaker 1: a stir fried little head of baby bok choy on
Speaker 1: your plate and you're eating with chopsticks, the leaves come
Speaker 1: away whole as you peel them off, or or yeah,
Speaker 1: the fish flakes along the natural lines of its muscles.
Speaker 1: I have to say, with Bob Choy, I'm more inclined
Speaker 1: to try and grab the whole thing with chopsticks and
Speaker 1: shove it into my mouth, which is I think an
Speaker 1: important point to make here. We talk a lot about
Speaker 1: the precision of the chopsticks and maybe the brutal aspects
Speaker 1: of fort knife and spoon um, but I we do
Speaker 1: need to remind everyone that you can still eat like
Speaker 1: an utter slab while using chopsticks. It's well within uh
Speaker 1: within range for for for for human behavior. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I would often say, even when you observe Chinese people eating,
Speaker 1: they often will say, um, bring the bowl up to
Speaker 1: near their face as they eat with chopsticks, And there's
Speaker 1: kind of like this beautiful shoveling action that that I think.
Speaker 1: I think it might be a sort of trade. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's actually etiquette and what's not. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like Western tradition would say, you don't hold
Speaker 1: the bowl up near your face. Well, this gets into two.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you hear it put forth it it's okay to slurp.
Speaker 1: Like slurping the soup in um in in certain Eastern
Speaker 1: traditions is a compliment to the chef that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I actually did have the experience once of getting noodles
Speaker 1: at a at a Chinese noodle shop in this was
Speaker 1: in Honolulu, I think, so it was predominantly Chinese clientele,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to eat consume the noodles, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, carefully and uh. And there was actually an
Speaker 1: older woman there, a Chinese woman who turned to me
Speaker 1: and basically let me know, it's okay to slurp, It's
Speaker 1: okay to bring the bowl up to your face, like
Speaker 1: this is this is all right, that's beautiful. Yeah. But anyway,
Speaker 1: but back to Confucius and to bar In both cases,
Speaker 1: there seems to be there's this idea that the method
Speaker 1: we use to get food from the plate into our
Speaker 1: mouths does have some kind of psychological conditioning effect. And
Speaker 1: I can't cite research to say that this is definitely true,
Speaker 1: but it certainly feels true. It at least it seems
Speaker 1: to make plausible sense. And I feel it myself when
Speaker 1: I'm eating. I feel a different kind of effect on
Speaker 1: my mind when I eat with chopsticks versus when I
Speaker 1: cut with a fork and knife. On some level, anytime
Speaker 1: I'm using a fork and knife to eat, I am
Speaker 1: picturing like a scene from a medieval motion picture of
Speaker 1: motion pictures set in medieval times, not one made during
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, obviously, but you know, some scene of
Speaker 1: some brutal lord carving up his food while hounds a
Speaker 1: feast on the bones beneath the table. Um Like, I'm
Speaker 1: somehow employing that scene in my mind, but both negatively
Speaker 1: but also positive positively, because there's something kind of awesome
Speaker 1: about that scenario too. And then when I eat with
Speaker 1: chopsticks there is something bird like, Like I'm on some
Speaker 1: level I'm imagining that I am being fed by a
Speaker 1: bird puppet. Well, for me, fork and knife feels more
Speaker 1: um mechanical, artificial and architectural, and chopsticks feel more organic
Speaker 1: and uh related to the forms of the natural world. Again,
Speaker 1: they are more like the extensions of your skeleton. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it also, as we were saying, coincides with differences
Speaker 1: in in common preparation methods, and say, many European traditions
Speaker 1: of cooking versus East Asian traditions of cooking were very often,
Speaker 1: though not always very often in say Chinese cooking, ingredients
Speaker 1: are sliced or cut up in advance. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: this we come back to that idea that scarce resources
Speaker 1: and growing population in China demanded that smaller portions of
Speaker 1: food be cooked fast over less fuel. Um. Thus chopsticks
Speaker 1: are 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, certainly there are
Speaker 1: a number of key advantages to cooking food. We've touched
Speaker 1: 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 it hot. We not prefer
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 shift from fingers
Speaker 1: to utensils between five hundred and a thousand b C.
Speaker 1: And then we see spoons and chopsticks used as an
Speaker 1: an established set of eating tools in China between three
Speaker 1: hundred and six hundred C. So this this is the
Speaker 1: point where it becomes clear that if you're going to eat,
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna need that spoon because there are going
Speaker 1: to continue to be soups and broths and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: on the but on the other side of the plate,
Speaker 1: you're going to want those chopsticks because that is going
Speaker 1: to be how you're gonna 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: When we come back, we're going to discuss the legacy
Speaker 1: of chopsticks. Alright, we're back, okay, Robert. We mentioned a
Speaker 1: little bit about random bits of chopsticks etiquette before. One
Speaker 1: thing we should point out is that there are definitely
Speaker 1: some regional variations on chopstick etiquette. You know, the rules
Speaker 1: aren't the same everywhere you go. But some common examples
Speaker 1: that I've found reading about chopstick etiquette around the world
Speaker 1: would be. One big one is you don't stab a
Speaker 1: food with the tip tip of chopsticks apply. That is
Speaker 1: just that's not cool. Yeah, that's one you have to
Speaker 1: you have to really break down for a child of
Speaker 1: when I was, when my own son was learning how
Speaker 1: to use chopsticks. I mean, that's you. You want to
Speaker 1: use them like the adults are using them, but it's
Speaker 1: difficult at first, and the first thing that comes to
Speaker 1: their mind is, well, I can just use this to
Speaker 1: 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, Sometimes you're eating
Speaker 1: a good bowl of some kind of stir fried delight,
Speaker 1: maybe it's some kind of noodle, dish or some fried
Speaker 1: rice or just some kind of stir frying. You might
Speaker 1: be 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 you
Speaker 1: to Liz in the freedom of the utensil. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, it also makes sense if you're thinking
Speaker 1: about a more communal um eating scenario where you're sharing
Speaker 1: one big bowl or of one hot pot, etcetera. Uh
Speaker 1: it it's cheating for you to go digging around and
Speaker 1: getting all the choice pizza pieces of protein out before
Speaker 1: anyone else can have a shot at them exactly. And
Speaker 1: also I don't know if this is the reason, but
Speaker 1: I have to wonder if part of it is that
Speaker 1: it could be considered insulting to the host or the cook,
Speaker 1: right implying that the dish only has a limited amount
Speaker 1: of the good stuff and there's not enough of it,
Speaker 1: and you want to dig around to find all of that. Again,
Speaker 1: it's the very thing you want 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 headiquette that we can take take with us,
Speaker 1: because sometimes it is hard to resist again for that choice, uh,
Speaker 1: that choice delicious shrimp in there in the noodles. Well,
Speaker 1: I find myself maybe maybe this is bad manners in general,
Speaker 1: but I find myself when using chopsticks, especially just trying
Speaker 1: to compose perfect little mouthfuls of things like I want
Speaker 1: to get everything lined up together, like a little bit
Speaker 1: of a little bit of the carbohydrate element, a little
Speaker 1: bit of the vegetable, a little bit of the meat
Speaker 1: or whatever, and have that all just arranged just right
Speaker 1: before I shovel. Oh yeah, And then if you're like me,
Speaker 1: you run the risk of of its slipping because you're
Speaker 1: you're trying to treat This is my possible interpretation here
Speaker 1: is that sometimes we try and treat treat the chopsticks
Speaker 1: as a fork, because with the fork, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: just go stab stab, stab, stab, and you get your
Speaker 1: little you know, taste sensation and of four different elements
Speaker 1: lined up one by buffet, right, But with chopsticks, sometimes
Speaker 1: when I try and do that, uh, there's it can
Speaker 1: be an act of folly because ultimately maybe I should
Speaker 1: be doing it piece by piece in a more chopsticks
Speaker 1: friendly manner. You know, one thing I've noticed when I
Speaker 1: watched I watch a decent amount of cooking videos with
Speaker 1: you know, actual chefs in the Asian traditions, like Japanese chefs,
Speaker 1: Chinese chefs, and a lot of times I see them
Speaker 1: using chopsticks still in cooking. We mentioned that they originally
Speaker 1: played a big role in cooking, but I see this
Speaker 1: still happening. They're like chopsticks used in a walk, chopsticks
Speaker 1: used for say, tempera frying. Yeah. And then you will
Speaker 1: also see with with modern um, you know, gourmet chefs.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's ever watched you know, some sort of a
Speaker 1: Netflix cooking show hasn't has seen these gourmet chefs using
Speaker 1: tweezers but in some cases chopsticks uh to carefully align
Speaker 1: the food on the plate and make sure everything is
Speaker 1: position just right. Um like, that's essentially the same principle.
Speaker 1: I mean, what are tweezers but less proper chopsticks. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen our coworker Dylan Fagan eating Cheetos out
Speaker 1: 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: chopstick 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 the landfill in my lifetime. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: of the uh, the research that was provided for us
Speaker 1: from Scott Benjamin. On this, he points out that disposable sets,
Speaker 1: typically bamboo, weren't really created until the eighteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: uh and and this was largely a Japanese creation and today, uh,
Speaker 1: disposable chopsticks are a bit of a problem. In Japan alone,
Speaker 1: around twenty four billion pair are used each year, about
Speaker 1: two hundred pairs per person each year. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of waste. Yeah, but then again, uh, less Western listeners
Speaker 1: be too judgmental on this fact. I just remind everyone
Speaker 1: to think about your disposable straw usage, think about your
Speaker 1: disposable for knife, spoon and sport usage. Um. I think
Speaker 1: these are all part of the same problem. Oh, absolutely
Speaker 1: no reason to single out Japan here now. Um. Speaking
Speaker 1: of Japan, it's also pointed out that chopsticks were historically
Speaker 1: longer for men and shorter for women eight inches for men,
Speaker 1: seven inches for women, and that the actual size of
Speaker 1: chopsticks varies now and it seems that there's no standard
Speaker 1: length for any one country. Another pro chopsticks fact, the
Speaker 1: blunt shape of chopsticks also makes them uh, easier on
Speaker 1: lack covered ornate cookware. Again, you're not going to be
Speaker 1: stabbing and slicing with fork and knife on it. You're
Speaker 1: going to be more politely poking at them with the
Speaker 1: pieces of wood or in some cases of course, pieces
Speaker 1: of metal. Now, speaking of the materials used in chopsticks
Speaker 1: in Korea, metal shopsticks have have become the standard, but
Speaker 1: you also find various other uh substances, both currently and
Speaker 1: in the past, bamboo, plastic, wood, bone, stainless steel, us
Speaker 1: as well as for the wealthy titanium gold silver against porcelain, jade,
Speaker 1: ivory gold chopsticks. Yeah. Uh. And it's also was once
Speaker 1: believed that chopsticks made of silver would corrode and turn
Speaker 1: black if the food was poison So this sounds like
Speaker 1: it's along the lines of the rhino horn and jade. However,
Speaker 1: of course this is not true. Silver silver will not
Speaker 1: react to arsenic or cyanide, but it will react to garlic, onions,
Speaker 1: rotten eggs. Uh. These are all things that produce hydrogen sulfide,
Speaker 1: which does turn silver black. Now a few other little
Speaker 1: tidbits about chopstick use. Um Whang points out in his
Speaker 1: book that you had the chopstick diet. Japanese English Arthur
Speaker 1: Kamiko Barber argued in her two thousand nine book The
Speaker 1: Chopsticks Diet that using chopsticks is healthier because it forces
Speaker 1: you 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 save her food more. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again it's presented a wighing presented it as uh something
Speaker 1: to think about, not necessarily fact. Uh. He also points
Speaker 1: out uh in fact, he points out several times this
Speaker 1: idea of the chopsticks cultural sphere. Uh. This was a
Speaker 1: term coined by Japanese writer Ishiki Hashiro and uh. He
Speaker 1: argued that chopsticks require enhanced brain coordination and that this
Speaker 1: imp who's not only dexterity but also brain development, especially
Speaker 1: in children. Now and Wang's points out that scientists have
Speaker 1: reduced quote positive results on both fronts, but that also
Speaker 1: lifetime chopsticks use might result in higher risk for osteoarthritis
Speaker 1: in hand joints among the elderly. More work is required
Speaker 1: in both areas though, and perhaps this is something that
Speaker 1: we could follow up with Unstuffed tobil your mind in
Speaker 1: the future. Yes, I definitely be interested in that, especially
Speaker 1: given what we talked about earlier that at least firsthand
Speaker 1: experience really makes me feel like chopsticks are doing something
Speaker 1: to my brain. So it feels like something different is
Speaker 1: happening to my mind when I use them, as opposed
Speaker 1: to fork and knife. Now, chopsticks also show up in
Speaker 1: another interesting place, uh in a now semi famous paper
Speaker 1: that is about the dangers of not understanding your sample
Speaker 1: correctly if you're a scientist and you're doing something like
Speaker 1: genetics testing. And it's a principle known as population stratification
Speaker 1: or population ad mixture that was discussed in a two
Speaker 1: thousand paper by Hamer and Serota called Beware the Chopsticks
Speaker 1: gene in the Nature publication Molecular Psychiatry. Now, the authors
Speaker 1: of this paper tell a story to illustrate how scientists
Speaker 1: can possibly be misled in genetics research if they're not careful.
Speaker 1: And the story goes like this, So Robert, once upon
Speaker 1: a time there was an ethno geneticist who was looking
Speaker 1: for a subject to study, and he decided he would
Speaker 1: like to figure out why certain people eat with chopsticks
Speaker 1: and others don't. So he rounded up a few hundred
Speaker 1: university students and he gave them questionnaires to find out
Speaker 1: how often they used chopsticks, and then he took cheek
Speaker 1: swabs to get DNA samples from each of them. So
Speaker 1: his lab ran DNA analysis and cross reference the responses
Speaker 1: to the questionnaire with the d N A and found
Speaker 1: a huge correlation between one particular genetic marker right in
Speaker 1: the middle of a region previously linked to other behavioral traits,
Speaker 1: and the you of chopsticks. And so then this experiment
Speaker 1: was replicated. It was performed at several other universities and
Speaker 1: they all got the same result. So the original ethnogeneticist
Speaker 1: he celebrates. He decides it's time to call up the
Speaker 1: media and tell them I've found the chopsticks gene. It
Speaker 1: is a gene that makes people prone to eat with chopsticks.
Speaker 1: And this, again is correlation. And as we frequently point out,
Speaker 1: is that one of the golden rules of science is
Speaker 1: that correlation is not necessarily causation. Right, anything that is
Speaker 1: causation should be correlated. But there are lots of things
Speaker 1: that are correlated that don't have a causal relationship with
Speaker 1: each other. And this could very well be one of
Speaker 1: those examples because in this story, unfortunately the geneticist discovers
Speaker 1: only several years later that this particular gene is actually
Speaker 1: a histo compatibility antigen gene that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with dining utensils. But it just happens to be in
Speaker 1: a real that's more common in people with recent Asian
Speaker 1: ancestry than with other ethnic groups. So the point is
Speaker 1: to illustrate that you could find a gene associated with
Speaker 1: a trait. The level of statistical correlation can be highly significant,
Speaker 1: and the test can be replicated many times, and it's
Speaker 1: still possible that your results are biologically meaningless. This gene
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with how you use your hands
Speaker 1: or what kind of utensils you favor. It happens to
Speaker 1: be more common in a population who uses chopsticks more
Speaker 1: often for cultural reasons. It's a complete accident of culture,
Speaker 1: and it highlights a general problem with studying populations. If
Speaker 1: you don't understand and consider the population you're studying, it's
Speaker 1: possible to draw spurious correlations. Using similar naive logic, you
Speaker 1: could probably find a French accent gene or a support
Speaker 1: for Russia's World Cup team gene. You know this. This
Speaker 1: does remind me um of an early experience taking my
Speaker 1: my son to a Chinese restaurant. My wife and I
Speaker 1: were there with him and uh, and he did not
Speaker 1: know how to use chopsticks at the time. He's now
Speaker 1: he's six years old and uses them extremely well. But
Speaker 1: when we first took him took into this Chinese restaurant, uh. Uh.
Speaker 1: The the the owner of the restaurant came around. He
Speaker 1: was saying hi and uh and of course he noted
Speaker 1: that that my son is is ethnically Han Chinese, and
Speaker 1: he he said, he pointed out to he said, don't
Speaker 1: let him use the cheating chopsticks, you know once where
Speaker 1: you take and or HNDE. He says, don't let him
Speaker 1: use those. Let him just figure it out because he
Speaker 1: has it in his d n A. Well, that's kind
Speaker 1: of a sweet story, but yeah, it operates on exactly
Speaker 1: the same principle, assuming that things that are actually just
Speaker 1: accidents of culture and history are somehow in the body,
Speaker 1: that there's something in the body that makes you that way, right,
Speaker 1: when really it is just a it is a it
Speaker 1: is cultural information. It's a cultural it's cultural knowledge that
Speaker 1: has passed on and uh and in the case of
Speaker 1: learning how to use chopsticks, I will say that his
Speaker 1: his advice was, I think act completely sound. Uh. My
Speaker 1: son used to learn to use chopsticks. Uh, not by
Speaker 1: cheating and using some sort of rubber band h and
Speaker 1: a piece of paper rolled up. He used them by
Speaker 1: watching adults use them, imitating what they were doing, using them,
Speaker 1: you know, poorly for a while, and then using them
Speaker 1: with competence as an adult. I'm pretty good with chopsticks,
Speaker 1: but I did start using them at a slightly later age.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I had started using them at an
Speaker 1: earlier age, when I still had that neuroplasticity window open,
Speaker 1: you know, if I had started using them as early
Speaker 1: as I used a fork, if if they feel more
Speaker 1: like an extension of my hand, just kind of this
Speaker 1: perfectly intuitive part of my body. Well, we could easily
Speaker 1: come back to a lot of this. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of food left on the table, if you will, um,
Speaker 1: because indeed, like, how if you start earlier with chopsticks,
Speaker 1: are you in fact more skilled with them? And then
Speaker 1: there's the question of you know, why isn't chopsticks usage
Speaker 1: part of one's DNA, Like how long does something have
Speaker 1: to be around in human culture before it is part
Speaker 1: of our human genetic legacy. And then to what extent
Speaker 1: does does cultural knowledge uh make genetic information less important? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: you can certainly make that argument. I mean a big
Speaker 1: thing about what culture is is that culture is a
Speaker 1: great substitute for instinct You know, you don't need quite
Speaker 1: so many inborn instincts that are hardwired into the brain.
Speaker 1: If you have children who are born as learning machines
Speaker 1: and adults who can teach them what to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lesson is learned by the individual in months, whereas
Speaker 1: it would be learned by the species across what a
Speaker 1: million years? Yeah, and I like that about us. I
Speaker 1: like that it's fun being a human because you can
Speaker 1: grow up learning to use fork and knife, or you
Speaker 1: can grow up learning to use chopsticks. You know, the
Speaker 1: brain works either way. If we were some kind of
Speaker 1: lizard that just had like a hardwired fork and knife
Speaker 1: nervous system and chopsticks would never make sense to us.
Speaker 1: That would be a tragedy. It would it would it
Speaker 1: would be it would be a world without all these
Speaker 1: fabulous inventions, including chopsticks. All right, So there you have it. Uh.
Speaker 1: An introduction to the history of chopsticks, to the use
Speaker 1: of chop sticks, and then the way it changes the
Speaker 1: way we interact with our food, think about food, et cetera.
Speaker 1: If you would like to check out more episodes of
Speaker 1: this podcast, head on over to Inventions dot show, dot UK,
Speaker 1: dot du and and you will find all the episodes
Speaker 1: of Invention that we have unleashed thus far. Big thanks
Speaker 1: to our audio producer, Bruce Dickinson. Invention is production of
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