Invention Classic: Chopsticks

One of the key sources for this that will discuss in the episode is a wonderful little book titled Chopsticks, A Cultural and Culinary History by Q. Edward Wang. I highly recommend checking that out if you were at all interested in Chinese culture, Chinese history, or just Chinese cuisine in general. So this is our classic episode on Chopsticks. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is

Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, do you hate as much as I do? The stock scene from movies, TV shows, commercials. It's everywhere of the standard clueless, clumsy Caucasian American guy trying to use chopsticks and dropping food all over the place sometimes while a little like Blue de Blue cartoon music plays. I don't think I've really witnessed it recently, so it's kind of it's kind of

fallen out of my mind a certain extent. I tend to think of, you know, scenes from Blade Runner or something where where the Harrison Ford character, uh definitely has his chop skip sticks skills down. You know. It's not that I don't believe that there are adults in America who don't know how to use chopsticks. I'm sure there are. I mean, people have different levels of experience, and it's

probably not easy the first time you do it. Oh yeah, I'm sure they exist at the highest level of US government. But I just don't think that this is particularly hilarious, especially in like the twenty one century. I mean, this was a scene we were seeing in in TV shows in the nineteen eighties. It's on par with the scene where somebody goes to a sushi restaurant and they're like raw, yeah. Yeah.

It seems like at this point you would be you would be on board with with sushi or or you would just not be in the sushi restaurant to begin with, and you would certainly be at least, you know, halfway competent with a pair of chopsticks. Even if you're not competent, it's just a thing that you have to learn how to do. It's like watching people learn how to ride a bicycle. It's just not particularly funny. Why was this once a source of much cultural hilarity in the United States?

I imagine it was also pretty hilarious from the other perspective to you know, it's a bumbling Westerns trying to to use this very precise method of of of manipulating food. I have to admit that I love chopsticks and a kind of embarrassing naive way. Like one of my favorite things about about eating several different kinds of Asian food is using chopsticks to eat them. I love like Chinese

noodles with chopsticks. I love eating sushi with chopsticks, though sometimes I just eat sushi with my hands as as you often do. Acceptable. Yeah, um, but I love using chopsticks. I love it almost as much as I love the food itself. But I have found very strangely that I have a psychological block against using chopsticks on ethnic cuisines with which they do not originally pair. So I love using chopsticks, and I want any excuse to use them. But I've tried to eat spaghetti with them with like

tornato basil sauce, and it does not work. It is psychologically revolting. But this is all ridiculous when you start getting into the deeper history of of any nation's cuisine. I mean, where do you think those those noodles in spaghetti and Italian spaghetti came from. That's a good point. They came from the East. They came from the land

of chopsticks. And of course, one of the things we're gonna get gonna get into in this episode is that you know, there was a time before widespread chopstick usage, uh in in Asia. There was a time before widespread noodle and dumpling consumption in Asia. And it's all part of the history of of of how we eat our food and what we eat. Right, So today's episode is going to be about chopstick technology, right. Uh So, everyone I think is familiar with chopsticks. We don't have to

really explain these too much. But there's two of them. There's two of them, there's sticks. There're sticks. Use your manual dexterity to manipulate food with them. And you know, they may be made out of wood, bamboo, or they may be made out of metal or ceramic plastic in some cases. But it's it's a pretty simple concept and it it does allow an amazing amount of precision. I

remember at an early age, I was really impressed by chopsticks. Uh, in part because know, we would go to little, little Chinese restaurants in the in the States, and when my family was living in Canada, one of my father's coworkers, Um was a Chinese Canadian physician, and he would use chopsticks, and he would let us use chopsticks. And there was

a story he told when he was a child. If he was if he misbehaved, his mother would dump a small bowl of uncooked rice out under the table, give him a pair of chopsticks, and then he would have to um move each grain of rice with the chopsticks back into the bowl. That is amazing because that sounds like a punishment straight out of a fairy tale, doesn't it. That's like a fair that's like a Cinderella type punishment. But chopsticks, they are exactly the tool you would want

to use to to carry out this task. I mean they they're just so precise they even beat human fingers in many instances. If not in precision, then at least intact right because it allows you to. Because so much of our are our our use of utensils, it's about how do you eat the food effectively, but also in

a way that doesn't insult the people that you're eating with. Likewise, if you're eating hot food, which has been popular in human culture, um it it, it behooves you to be able to handle that food without burning your fingers, and chopsticks allow you to do that. You know, when it comes to picking up individual grains of rice one at a time, I found out that there actually is a Guinness World Record category for speed in picking up and

eating individual grains of rice with chopsticks. That's a that's a thing you can compete in. So you can go the like number of hot dogs in a minute thing, or you can go the number of grains of rice in a minute thing. Um And apparently the current holder of this world record is somebody named Silvio Saba in Milan, Italy, who was able to pick up and eat twenty five individual grains of rice with chopsticks in one minute in February, which, actually that sounds kind of I feel like that record

could be beaten. I'm just imagining it. And maybe so maybe you're the man to take up the chopsticks and give it a try. I mean, surely you can get down to like a second and a half per per rice grain, right. I don't know who are we to out the Guinness Book of World Records, though, Joe. You know, one thing is certain though, When I'm using chopsticks, I often think about I mean just always impressing these are great, and I do feel that temptation to want to use

them on other foods. And really about the only foods that I when I think about it, that they don't make sense for so much are foods that require a great deal of cutting and carving. Uh. You know, so I'm thinking, like, if you're eating a steak, uh, you would need a knife. Now I guess you could. You could use a knife and chopsticks, and that would that would work. But for the most part, chopsticks are gonna are gonna get you there with just about any food.

You know, when you mentioned pairing a knife with chopsticks. There at least once was a product called work and Knife chopsticks. Have you seen this. There's like a a promo obnoxious comedy promo video that used to go around the internet. Actually, it was a video where hilarity ensues when some Caucasian gentleman is trying to eat something with chopsticks. He just keeps dropping it all over himself and it's like, oh,

there was There's got to be a better way. And the better way is that the other side of these chopsticks are a fork and a knife. Oh so you can flip them around. See at first I thought you meant that you're using them like chopsticks, but then it has a tiny fork and a tiny knife on the end because it's just you flip them around. Okay, uh no, yes, so it's stick party in front, fork and knife business

and back. And actually they would like they would sort of hook together to make hinged chopsticks, which are not exactly traditional chopsticks. Okay, well that's not the worst invention, I suppose. Now, the promo video is really obnoxious, but the invention is fine, though it looks like it's been discontinued or at least from the original cellar as far as I could tell. Chopsticks themselves, however, of course, are still very much in production. They have not been discontinued.

There's no sign of chopsticks going away anytime soon. In fact, I think I read about a problem with billions of disposable chopsticks being used every year. Yeah, yea. If anything, that the big take home is if you like using chopsticks, if you find yourself regularly using chopsticks, invest in a in a set of chopsticks, a mobile set that you can carry around and use it home and cut down on the on the disposable chopsticks. Now where did chopsticks

come from? Well, they came from China and uh and as as we were talking about with our our researcher for this program, Scott Benjamin, Uh, they popped up prior to b C those some sources say they've been around for nearly nine thousand years. But uh, this is this is as cooking utensils, a way of moving ingredients around in on hot walk for instance. But when it comes to the use of chopsticks at the dinner table or

you know, as a means of bringing food to your mouth. Um, sometimes you see it stated that we're really looking at more four hundred c as A as A as A as kind of a rough, very rough time stamp for when it really began to become more popular and began to spread culturally, the idea that these are utensils that should be used to consume food as well. Now, as we'll get into this, this is not like a very

this is not a super firm time stamp. It's not like you will not find people eating with chopsticks before that point. But this seems to be where the Levey really breaks on the idea. People do like to come up with origins stories for things, though, even when there isn't a clear origin story. Well, that's often part of the fun, right, is that there's not a there's not an actual inventor, but there's a mythic character that had some sort of role in the invention, some sort of

you know, cultural hero who stole fire from the gods, etcetera. Exactly. So we were both looking at a book, Robert, I think you actually read the whole book. Yeah, it's a it's a short read, actually, something like two hundred and something pages. It's a book by Q. Edward Wang that is called Chopsticks, a Cultural and Culinary History, polished from

Cambridge University Press. And Wine points out that a common Chinese legend tells the story of how chopsticks were first invented by Da You, founder of the Shah dynasty which ruled from twenty one hundred to sixteen hundred b c. E. And I've poked around for a couple of versions of this legend. Basically the story goes like this, Da You was the figure credited with fighting the Great Flood of Chinese history and mythology by the use of dredging in

the riverbeds and construction of irrigation canals to divert water flow. Now, Robert, you've talked about the Chinese Great Flood legends on podcasts before. Yeah, and You definitely comes up in in that episode. And because he's a he's a true cultural here in Chinese mythology and the um. If I am remembering correctly, the the knowledge to to to overcome the flood was was actually stolen or obtained from the gods, I think by you his father uh and then you himself as the

one who really brings it to the people. I think that's correct. But so you eventually succeeds in defeating the Great flood, and this made him emperor and founder of the Shah dynasty. But there are lots of stories and legends about how much he sacrificed personally and how tirelessly he worked on this project uh to to defeat the floodwaters.

And one of these legends is that day had at one point had some meat sizzling in a walk, but he was in such a hurry to fight the flood that he couldn't sit there and wait for the meat to cool down enough to handle and eat. So he got a pair of twigs and he used them to pick up the hot pieces of meat and hurry along

his meal so he could back to work. But clearly this is just a legend, but still there it does illustrate, like the basic clever idea that the novelty of using just some twigs some sticks, but using them, using just found objects, but using them in an inventive way, uh that the changes the way you do things. And this is this is likely exactly how chopsticks emerged in just the darkness of prehistory. Is the use of found twigs um.

You know, maybe the twigs of the manipulated in some fashion, but for the most part, just a couple of found sticks that are used to manipulate food inside of a cooking pot. Or also the use of fire sticks, which would just be uh, chopsticks that are used for moving

burning wood or coal around. Now, one thing that I think is interesting about chopsticks that is different from the use of say a fork or a knife, or even I mean sort of like a spoon, but also somewhat different from a spoon, is that chopsticks in a way function sort of like extensions of the fingers. You know, they do a similar pinching action that you can do with your thumb and index finger, um, but they you know,

they extend the fingers farther. They can handle hot stuff without getting grease on the fingers, and all that, they can reach into soup and pull out noodles, that they can do all that kind of stuff. But they in a way feel like a more natural extension of the pinching, grasping action of the skeleton itself. They feel like more like they emerge out of the schema of the human body than say a knife, which you know, you don't have a knife, and you don't have any sharp fingers,

you don't have a fork. Really, there's no stabbing sharp tynes on your hand, and there's just nothing analogous to a knife and a fork on your body. Yeah, I mean this makes me realize that in grant granted, I probably I definitely use fork and knife more than I use chopsticks. And I am not, by any mean as a you know, an expert practitioner with chopsticks, But I do feel like I am far more likely to bumble and drop a fork, knife, or spoon than I am

to bumble and drop my chopsticks. Like they're the chopsticks, to your point, are just more an extension of your body when you're using them. Now, obviously, if you're looking for ancient artifacts ancient evidence of chopsticks, uh, just standard twigs aren't going to stick around very well, right, So you'd you'd be looking probably for chopsticks or indications that

chopsticks were made out of other materials. Right. So for instance, um, you will find um like bronze chopsticks or what are believed to be chopsticks in the tombs of the of the ruins of Yin in Henan Province in Central China. Because essentially what we're talking about here is a Neolithic invention. Like you said, the twigs are not going to stick around. There is evidence that suggests five thousand BC as a

as a possibility for early archaeological evidence of chopsticks. So I've also read that some of these bones sticks from this time and earlier may also be interpreted as hairpins or or tools of another sort. Uh. But this is often a problem with like Neolithic technology, is it's not quite so clear what you're really looking at. It might be clear that an artifact is not naturally occurring and it was shaped in some way, but what was it

used for not always clear. Because this is ultimately one of the confounding things about chopsticks is that it is a relatively simple concept. Uh. You don't need anything beyond Neolithic technology to pull it off. And yet you don't see it emerging independently in other cultures. Uh. You know, ultimately, you just don't see it taking off everywhere, but it but it is a it's a cultural difference, and you

see similar cultural differences in tool use among Chimpanzees, for instance. Uh, nothing so grand as as chopstick used, you will not find chimpanzees inventing the chopsticks, but you will see similar similar situation in things that are unessential behavior. You do not have to invent the chopstick in order to eat and survive and develop all the other technologies that uh

that a culture may develop. Uh. But but but it is curious how we we see the chopsticks emerge in China and spread out from China, but they don't independently emerge elsewhere. Now, as far as evidence that twigs were commonly used just you know, snapped off branches and twigs were commonly used for chopsticks, Whang in his book sites literary evidence from the ancient world that it was a common practice by say the third or fourth century b c e. To snap pieces off of the lower branches

of a tree and use them for chopsticks. And for example, he cites a passage from jun Z who lived three forty to forty five b c. Uh And and jen Z says this in service of illustrating an unrelated point. So he's just like sort of using an analogy here. But he says, if you look up at a forest from the foot of a hill. The bigger tree is appear no taller than chopsticks, and yet no one hoping to find chopsticks is likely to go picking among them.

It is simply that the height obscures their natural dimensions. So he's not really talking about chopsticks in this passage, but it just sort of makes passing reference to the fact that you might go quote picking chopsticks. So it becomes difficult to really like nail down when people started using chopsticks in cooking. So we have in this an ancient tool, an ancient utensil for the preparation of food. The question then is how does it really leave the kitchen?

How does it go from being just something that you use in the production of food to becoming the primary means of consuming said food, Because, for instance, many of us use a ladle in the kitchen. You know, one of those you know, those deep seated uh spoons that that are that are just reladling out soup. You probably don't use one at the dinner table. You probably don't use it to drink soup. I eat with a spider strainer. Um, But that's that's another example. Yeah, you could technically do it,

but you probably don't. Um. Speaking of spoon's, spoons and soup, though, Wayne gets into this and he points out that the spoon was actually the most important eating implement for people in ancient East and Southeast Asia. I can see that. I mean, the spoon is going to be common to pretty much every culture, right because it is essentially just a retaining receptacle. I mean you can move pretty much

any kind of food. You could eat steak with the spoon, right, Yeah, it's I Actually you've given the choice between a fork and a spoon. I rarely picked the fork. I don't eat a lot of food that requires a stabbing fork anymore. Uh So I'm more than happy with the spoon. Just give me the spoon. I don't even want to look at the fork. The anything I can do with the fork, you can probably do with the spoon, And then of course I can do it even better with the chopsticks.

But um, but the spoon was the most important eating an implement for for people in ancient East and Southeast Asia. And this is backed up by both archaeological and textual accounts. And there are many reasons, some of these that we've just hit on here. Just the ultimate practical practicality of the spoon. But but something else that Whining points out is that from antiquity up to the tenth century, millet was the dominant grain cereal in North China, Korea, and

parts of Japan. And this particular substances best cooked into a thick gruel that that demands the attention of spoons rather than any other form of utensil. So, yeah, try to imagine eating like oatmeal with chopsticks. You could do it, It's just not the best thing to use, right, And you might say, well, what's the different how about rice? How's rice difference? What rice clumps up? Rice is different? I mean, if you are eating rice that you cannot

eat with chopsticks, you're probably eating the wrong rice. Well that's not necessarily true. I mean, so like sometimes bosmati rice, which is wonderful, doesn't clump together the same way like a jasmine rice would. But yeah, I guess what I had in mind when I was insulting rice was like par boiled rice, which maintains very distinct individual grains and is yeah right, and uh and boiling is key here because this was the age of boiling uh stews and soups.

The this is what you ate chopsticks. They crept in is merely a supporting utensil that you might use to like stir around the depths to grab a few things out of the depths of your super stew. But for the most part you're gonna have to depend on that spoon.

By the tenth century, weighing rights, wheat becomes the primary grain, and so you get wheat noodles, you get wheat dumplings, and then chopsticks becoming extremely important because these are these make it far easier to manipulate those noodles or or dumplings if you've ever tried to eat, especially noodles with a spoon. But even a dumpling can become a complete comedy of errors if you're because of dumpling contend to be a little slippery and you're trying to like balance

it on the spoon. No, you're better off grabbing it with the chopsticks. And then from the eleven and century onward, he writes that rice, of course becomes increasingly popular. Uh and since rice clumps, chopsticks can be used a great effect with them. Oh yeah, And then and then in terms of of boiling well. By the third century, he writes that you by this point you had cooking oils thanks to the millstone. That that allows you to you know, to break down the various seeds and whatnot that you're

using to create that that frying oil. Uh So, yeah, you don't have to boil all of your ingredients. You can fry them. And this means more reliance on bite size ingredients rather than you know, giant you know, bones and meat that are dropped in with your vegetables for

the stew. Yeah. And though of course not all say Chinese cooking is the stir fries were familiar with or whatever, that is one common feature of many Chinese recipes is um things, you know, not a big hunk of meat on the plate, but things sliced into bite sized pieces. And the other thing about bite sized pieces is that they is that they cook faster, they require less fuel. This becomes more and more important, many commentators touch upon

as as fuel becomes an issue. Right in Chinese civilization, there were points where suddenly, like firewood is more expensive, harder to come by. Yeah, so what are you gonna cook? You're gonna cook a giant slab of meat? Or you're gonna cook little slivers of meat that have been prepared of course in the kitchen and then and and and then then fried up, and you can manipulate them with your chopsticks, uh, while they're cooking, and then of course when it comes time to eat. It is also the

perfect implement to employ. Weighing also points out that in pre modern times, chopsticks also cut down in the risk of germs in communal eating. An interesting point. So yeah, if people are, say, picking dumplings out of a shared dish, you don't have to reach in there with your dirty hands.

You can pluck them out precisely with chopsticks. Now, it's important to note in all of this that we again we can't simply say that people created chopsticks in this age or that they begin to actually eat with them in another age. There's a lot of grad will change going on here, and there are some notable ancient accounts, uh accounts or legends or myths. So what have you of eating with chopsticks? And that's where we have to to discuss the lavish lifestyle of King Joe of the

Shuan dynasty. He would have lived ten seventy five through ten forty six b C. Okay, take me there, take me to this ancient binge. All right, So he established somewhat of a reputation. He's best remembered ash what's the term party animal? Yeah, definitely a party animal, A real

blue do, a real blue do. Yeah. He he loved his his food, he loved the flesh, and uh and and so we have to keep that in mind that like, how much of this is accurate, how much of this isn't as an actual ruler, who would, who had a decadent lifestyle? And how much of this is of course just attributed to somebody who fell out of the good graces of history. But so, okay, if he's if he's a party animal, does he party with chopsticks? He does. He was said to have always eaten with an ornate

pair of ivory chopsticks. And he wouldn't it was it was strongly stressed that he wouldn't eat out of just earthenware bowls like the rest of the people. No, he would only eat from bowls of jade and rhino horn. Oh, rhino horn. Now we've talked before on a different show on stuff to blow your mind about ancient beliefs concerning the powers of the rhino horn, especially as it concerned people who were concerned with being poisoned like royalty. Right yeah.

And then jade of course also has magical properties in in Chinese traditions, so it makes sense that that he would only eat from these because they would have been reputed to have some sort of uh focus on few food purification and poison prevention UH and ivory chopsticks would later go on to become a symbol of deconant life and corrupt politics. But it went far beyond that with with King Joe, he said to have had his own quote alcohol pool and meat forest. I stole the name

of my restaurant. I can't open it now. It does remind me of some of these more decadent steak restaurants, you know, where they bring around like skewers of meat. Because this is described as essentially a lake of wine, and you would boat around in it, you know, with your concubines and your pals. And as you're boating around drinking from the wine lake, you would also pluck cuts of meat from the roasting pillars that are around you, like a forest. This is like a Satanic Charlie in

the chocolate factory. It is this like unholy version of the chocolate Rivers. He is also said to have delighted in eating quote, the meat of long haired buffaloes and unborn leopards. I have no comment on that. Well, it's just it's a decadent diet to have, you know, only the weirdest and the strangest. It's like uh, Monty Burns on The Simpsons wanting to wear the pelts of various exotic and endangered animals see my best Yes, yes, dude, dude,

chopstick etiquette time. We just gotta have that jump in and invade whatever we were talking about, right, just it will probably upset most people if you're eating unborn leopards. But also a point of etiquette here, never point your chopsticks at someone really yeah, like if you're you know, brandishing them at the table, you know, keep them, keep the direction down toward the food. That's generally advised. And also never stick your chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice,

as this is a portent of death. Yes, I've heard that. This is because chopsticks set upright in a bowl of rice can resemble sticks of incense or chopsticks that are set upright in rice in funeral ceremonies. Oh, this makes sense. This is but this is something that would be very easy to miss for let's say a Western or traveling in China, which is why you see it cited in a lot of travel books. Do not do this. This is an easy thing that you cannot do and save

yourself some grief. I always wonder about that kind of stuff when you see etiquette cited in books for travelers. It's like, is this a real rule or not? I feel like when you read those things, you've got to be reading some real common etiquette guidelines mixed in with things that people just made up. Well, I guess it depends on the faux pa they're warning you against, because some of them are more widespread and more central to a given culture. Like I instantly think of various taboos

concerning shoes and Thailand. Uh uh, you know, if you're seated so that your your shoes are pointed against somebody, or or certainly any kind of situation where your your shoes are placed saying a bin at an airport with other belongings. But we need to save that for our episode.

In the invention of shoes. At this point, we should probably take a break, and when we come back, we're gonna discuss even more about the invention of chopsticks and just the the spread, the spread of this cultural idea that this is how one should eat one's food. All right, we're back. Robert divulged to me the wisdom of the

Great Confucius as it concerns utense el etiquette. Yes, Uh, this is this is interesting because this is where we find the connection between the great Chinese teacher, politician, and philosopher Confucius uh and shopsticks. UH. Interestingly enough, I was just watching Uh. I just finally began to watch Michael Woods The Story of China, which is a fabulous documentary. He's done a couple of these before, one on India, one on England, uh, and some other documentary features as well.

But this is, like I want to say, it's like an eight part documentary look at the history of China and Chinese culture, and it's it's it's really really good. You can find it on I think Amazon Prime currently and it's also on PBS in America. UM. But the first episode does a wonderful job of breaking it down just how political core Confucian teachings really were governing the about how you know you've governed them moral character of

a people via the ruler. So the ruler and in his morals, they're the wind to the people's field of grass, dictating the nature of the people. Oh, you know, I feel like our our modern Western sensibilities kind of well, actually, they're pushing me both ways on that, because on one hand, there's this sort of there's this very American tradition that says, you know, oh, we don't let leaders define us. We

say what the leaders should be. But then on the other hand, I think I've read that there is some pretty recent research in political science finding that very often people's opinions about about subjects that are controversial and politics are mostly shaped by what their leaders believe. There are a few issues that people have firm opinions on, most things, they just believe what the people they have designated their leaders in their cultural in group elites say. Yeah, I

think this lines up rather well with Confucian idea. Is now Confucius lived five fifty one through four seventy nine BC, a time during which we see the emergence of so many new ideas concerning human culture and the human condition. He's known outside of China as Confucius because this is the latinization of Khong Fuzi a k A Master Kong Uh. And then we can we can hardly summarize his teachings

here on the show. But but he believed that through study Uh, morality in virtue could win out over violence and tyranny. Ruling by example is better than ruling by law and punishment alone. His teachings, however, would only come to to widely influence Chinese rule and culture after his death. But his teachings did spread, and it seems so too

did his ideas on eating utensils. He championed blunt chopsticks over the use of knives, and is quoted as having believed that quote, the honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen, and he

allows no knives at his table. Now it's unknown to what extent this impacted the actual use of meat in Chinese cuisine, but perhaps do in part as well to Buddhist influence, one sees meat used more for flavor flavoring, you know, the broth flavoring vegetables by around the first century. This is really interesting because the thoughts of Confucius here actually remind me of something I read years ago about chopsticks that has been lodged in my brain ever since.

And I think it might be part of my love relationship with chopsticks. While I'm always looking for an excuse to use them, they feel morally good to me. Like something about using chopsticks isn't just esthetically pleasing, it feels virtuous. I know that that sounds quite silly, but I think one origin of this association in my mind is that when I was in college, I read a book called Pire of Signs by the French critic and semiotician roll

On Barth. It was first published in nineteen seventy and then in English translation by Richard Howard in the early nineteen eighties, and it's kind of a semiotic travelogue of Japan. And I honestly, I don't think i'd actually vouch for Barth, this very good observer of other cultures in general, even for his time, and I think you could argue that there are traces of kind of Orientalism and his thoughts about Asia. Apparently he was somewhat dismissive of the value

of studying Chinese culture. But I read this book many years ago, and Barth's thoughts about chopsticks always stuck with me as kind of more interesting and more thoughtful than than a lot of the rest. It's kind of more more interesting and perhaps more valid than a lot of the rest. So here's some of what he says about chopsticks, and this is abridged selections from his book Empire of Signs. Quote. The instrument never pierces, cuts or slits, never wounds, but

only selects, turns, shifts. For the chopsticks, in order to divide, must separate part peck instead of cutting and piercing in the manner of our implements. They never violate the food stuff, either they gradually unravel it in the case of vegetables, or else prod it into separate pieces in the case of fish eels, thereby rediscovering the natural fissures of the substance. He also writes, by chopsticks, food becomes no longer a prey to which one does violence meet, flesh over which

one does battle, but a substance harmoniously transferred. And then he says Finally, of people who use chopsticks to eat maternal they tirelessly perform the gesture which creates the mouthful, leaving to our alimentary manners armed with pikes and knives that of predation. Well, that's beautiful. I like that comparison. It somehow rings true to me. I mean, it may be an over generalization of the differences between the two

eating cultures. Uh, you know, Europeans fork and knife culture on one hand and and Japanese chopstick culture on the other hand, But I really feel like there's something something to what he's saying about the fact that when eating with chopsticks, one does not make artificial cuts in the meat or in the food in general as it is presented to you. It's you know, it might have been cut already in the preparation, but any separations of the

food stuff's happen along natural lines of separation. So I can think about like, if you have a you know, a stir fried little head of baby bok choy on your plate and you're eating with chopsticks, the leaves come away whole as you peel them off, or or yeah, the fish flakes along the natural lines of its muscles. I have to say, with Bob Choy, I'm more inclined to try and grab the whole thing with chopsticks and shove it into my mouth, which is I think an

important point to make here. We talk a lot about the precision of the chopsticks and maybe the brutal aspects of fort knife and spoon um, but I we do need to remind everyone that you can still eat like an utter slab while using chopsticks. It's well within uh

within range for for for for human behavior. Oh yeah, I would often say, even when you observe Chinese people eating, they often will say, um, bring the bowl up to near their face as they eat with chopsticks, And there's kind of like this beautiful shoveling action that that I think. I think it might be a sort of trade. I don't know what's actually etiquette and what's not. I mean, I feel like Western tradition would say, you don't hold the bowl up near your face. Well, this gets into two.

Sometimes you hear it put forth it it's okay to slurp. Like slurping the soup in um in in certain Eastern traditions is a compliment to the chef that sort of thing. I actually did have the experience once of getting noodles at a at a Chinese noodle shop in this was in Honolulu, I think, so it was predominantly Chinese clientele, and I was trying to eat consume the noodles, uh,

you know, carefully and uh. And there was actually an older woman there, a Chinese woman who turned to me and basically let me know, it's okay to slurp, It's okay to bring the bowl up to your face, like this is this is all right, that's beautiful. Yeah. But anyway, but back to Confucius and to bar In both cases, there seems to be there's this idea that the method we use to get food from the plate into our

mouths does have some kind of psychological conditioning effect. And I can't cite research to say that this is definitely true, but it certainly feels true. It at least it seems to make plausible sense. And I feel it myself when I'm eating. I feel a different kind of effect on my mind when I eat with chopsticks versus when I

cut with a fork and knife. On some level, anytime I'm using a fork and knife to eat, I am picturing like a scene from a medieval motion picture of motion pictures set in medieval times, not one made during the Middle Ages, obviously, but you know, some scene of some brutal lord carving up his food while hounds a feast on the bones beneath the table. Um Like, I'm somehow employing that scene in my mind, but both negatively but also positive positively, because there's something kind of awesome

about that scenario too. And then when I eat with chopsticks there is something bird like, Like I'm on some level I'm imagining that I am being fed by a bird puppet. Well, for me, fork and knife feels more um mechanical, artificial and architectural, and chopsticks feel more organic and uh related to the forms of the natural world. Again, they are more like the extensions of your skeleton. Yeah.

But it also, as we were saying, coincides with differences in in common preparation methods, and say, many European traditions of cooking versus East Asian traditions of cooking were very often, though not always very often in say Chinese cooking, ingredients are sliced or cut up in advance. Yeah, and then this we come back to that idea that scarce resources and growing population in China demanded that smaller portions of food be cooked fast over less fuel. Um. Thus chopsticks

are an ideal way to consume the finished dish as well. Um. Though. One of the points that Weighing makes in his book is that you know, technically, you know, certainly there are a number of key advantages to cooking food. We've touched on that and stuff to blow your mind before. Um. It is the externalization of digestion in many respects. But at the same time, do you have to eat it hot? Can you know? Can't you just wait until it's room

temperature again and then you can eat it with your fingers? Uh? We often insist on eating it hot. We not prefer warmer hot food. UM. I think there's some research on why we prefer hot food, right, is there? Well, that sounds like something we should say for a future episode on the invention of the hot bar. But in terms

of like eating with your fingers though, uh. He Weighing summarizes in his book again at Chopsticks, a Cultural and Culinary History, uh, that we see the shift from fingers to utensils between five hundred and a thousand b C. And then we see spoons and chopsticks used as an an established set of eating tools in China between three hundred and six hundred C. So this this is the point where it becomes clear that if you're going to eat, you're probably gonna need that spoon because there are going

to continue to be soups and broths and whatnot. But on the but on the other side of the plate, you're going to want those chopsticks because that is going to be how you're gonna consume all of these finer pieces. Chopsticks and spoon. They are the Buddy Cop movie of my mouth. All Right, we're gonna take one more break. When we come back, we're going to discuss the legacy of chopsticks. Alright, we're back, okay, Robert. We mentioned a

little bit about random bits of chopsticks etiquette before. One thing we should point out is that there are definitely some regional variations on chopstick etiquette. You know, the rules aren't the same everywhere you go. But some common examples that I've found reading about chopstick etiquette around the world would be. One big one is you don't stab a food with the tip tip of chopsticks apply. That is

just that's not cool. Yeah, that's one you have to you have to really break down for a child of when I was, when my own son was learning how to use chopsticks. I mean, that's you. You want to use them like the adults are using them, but it's difficult at first, and the first thing that comes to their mind is, well, I can just use this to stab my dumplings instead, and you have to say, no, do not stab the dumplings with that stick. It's like licking a knife. He's just you know, it just looks.

It looks brutal and weird. Yeah, except when Dracula does it, you know, when Gary Oldman licks the razor blade. Gary Oldman can make anything look cool. But hey, here's another one. I read this in several places, and I wonder how common this rule of etiquette actually is. But what I have read in several places is something about Chinese chopstick etiquette. And it chilled me because I know I've violated this.

I have done it. You know how, Sometimes you're eating a good bowl of some kind of stir fried delight, maybe it's some kind of noodle, dish or some fried rice or just some kind of stir frying. You might be searching around in your dish for that one delicious thing, that big piece of black fungus, or that one last shrimp or something like that. Apparently, digging around with chopsticks in search of something can be seen as bad manners and is something referred to as quote grave digging or

digging your grave. Huh. Well, on one hand, this seems like it's it's a it's a rule against over you to Liz in the freedom of the utensil. But on the other hand, it also makes sense if you're thinking about a more communal um eating scenario where you're sharing one big bowl or of one hot pot, etcetera. Uh it it's cheating for you to go digging around and getting all the choice pizza pieces of protein out before

anyone else can have a shot at them exactly. And also I don't know if this is the reason, but I have to wonder if part of it is that it could be considered insulting to the host or the cook, right implying that the dish only has a limited amount of the good stuff and there's not enough of it, and you want to dig around to find all of that. Again, it's the very thing you want a child not to do.

Don't just don't just eat the shrimp, eat the vegetables too, for the child's own good, but also so as not to insult the host. Right, because if you're just digging out the shrimp, the the implication is, why didn't you just give me a bowl full of shrimp? Well that makes sense. That makes sense as well, but also another piece of headiquette that we can take take with us, because sometimes it is hard to resist again for that choice, uh,

that choice delicious shrimp in there in the noodles. Well, I find myself maybe maybe this is bad manners in general, but I find myself when using chopsticks, especially just trying to compose perfect little mouthfuls of things like I want to get everything lined up together, like a little bit of a little bit of the carbohydrate element, a little bit of the vegetable, a little bit of the meat or whatever, and have that all just arranged just right

before I shovel. Oh yeah, And then if you're like me, you run the risk of of its slipping because you're you're trying to treat This is my possible interpretation here is that sometimes we try and treat treat the chopsticks as a fork, because with the fork, yeah, you can just go stab stab, stab, stab, and you get your little you know, taste sensation and of four different elements lined up one by buffet, right, But with chopsticks, sometimes when I try and do that, uh, there's it can

be an act of folly because ultimately maybe I should be doing it piece by piece in a more chopsticks friendly manner. You know, one thing I've noticed when I watched I watch a decent amount of cooking videos with you know, actual chefs in the Asian traditions, like Japanese chefs, Chinese chefs, and a lot of times I see them using chopsticks still in cooking. We mentioned that they originally played a big role in cooking, but I see this

still happening. They're like chopsticks used in a walk, chopsticks used for say, tempera frying. Yeah. And then you will also see with with modern um, you know, gourmet chefs. Anyone who's ever watched you know, some sort of a Netflix cooking show hasn't has seen these gourmet chefs using tweezers but in some cases chopsticks uh to carefully align the food on the plate and make sure everything is position just right. Um like, that's essentially the same principle.

I mean, what are tweezers but less proper chopsticks. Have you ever seen our coworker Dylan Fagan eating Cheetos out of a bag with chopsticks? No, I haven't noticed this. Gene yes doesn't get any Cheeto dust on his fingers. He'll have the little bag there and he's going at it with chopsticks, and it's so cute, And I think it's it's it's culturally appropriate because because because cheetos are a snack with no nation, they're they're completely honorless. So

it's okay to use chopsticks. If anything you have, you run the risk offending chopsticks. Now, a big part of chopstick culture in the world today is that we've got tons of disposable chopsticks chopsticks. Disposable chopsticks are being used all the time, and I am I am a big fan of reusable chopsticks, but I also admit I frequently used the disposable ones and feel bad about how many I've probably sent the landfill in my lifetime. Yeah, some of the uh, the research that was provided for us

from Scott Benjamin. On this, he points out that disposable sets, typically bamboo, weren't really created until the eighteen hundreds and uh and and this was largely a Japanese creation and today, uh, disposable chopsticks are a bit of a problem. In Japan alone, around twenty four billion pair are used each year, about two hundred pairs per person each year. That's a lot of waste. Yeah, but then again, uh, less Western listeners

be too judgmental on this fact. I just remind everyone to think about your disposable straw usage, think about your disposable for knife, spoon and sport usage. Um. I think these are all part of the same problem. Oh, absolutely

no reason to single out Japan here now. Um. Speaking of Japan, it's also pointed out that chopsticks were historically longer for men and shorter for women eight inches for men, seven inches for women, and that the actual size of chopsticks varies now and it seems that there's no standard length for any one country. Another pro chopsticks fact, the blunt shape of chopsticks also makes them uh, easier on lack covered ornate cookware. Again, you're not going to be

stabbing and slicing with fork and knife on it. You're going to be more politely poking at them with the pieces of wood or in some cases of course, pieces of metal. Now, speaking of the materials used in chopsticks in Korea, metal shopsticks have have become the standard, but you also find various other uh substances, both currently and in the past, bamboo, plastic, wood, bone, stainless steel, us as well as for the wealthy titanium gold silver against porcelain, jade,

ivory gold chopsticks. Yeah. Uh. And it's also was once believed that chopsticks made of silver would corrode and turn black if the food was poison So this sounds like it's along the lines of the rhino horn and jade. However, of course this is not true. Silver silver will not react to arsenic or cyanide, but it will react to garlic, onions, rotten eggs. Uh. These are all things that produce hydrogen sulfide, which does turn silver black. Now a few other little

tidbits about chopstick use. Um Whang points out in his book that you had the chopstick diet. Japanese English Arthur Kamiko Barber argued in her two thousand nine book The Chopsticks Diet that using chopsticks is healthier because it forces you to slow down and savor and think about your food. I don't know if it's actually healthier, but it does certainly force me to slow down and save her food more. Yeah. Again it's presented a wighing presented it as uh something

to think about, not necessarily fact. Uh. He also points out uh in fact, he points out several times this idea of the chopsticks cultural sphere. Uh. This was a term coined by Japanese writer Ishiki Hashiro and uh. He argued that chopsticks require enhanced brain coordination and that this imp who's not only dexterity but also brain development, especially

in children. Now and Wang's points out that scientists have reduced quote positive results on both fronts, but that also lifetime chopsticks use might result in higher risk for osteoarthritis in hand joints among the elderly. More work is required in both areas though, and perhaps this is something that we could follow up with Unstuffed tobil your mind in

the future. Yes, I definitely be interested in that, especially given what we talked about earlier that at least firsthand experience really makes me feel like chopsticks are doing something to my brain. So it feels like something different is happening to my mind when I use them, as opposed

to fork and knife. Now, chopsticks also show up in another interesting place, uh in a now semi famous paper that is about the dangers of not understanding your sample correctly if you're a scientist and you're doing something like genetics testing. And it's a principle known as population stratification or population ad mixture that was discussed in a two thousand paper by Hamer and Serota called Beware the Chopsticks

gene in the Nature publication Molecular Psychiatry. Now, the authors of this paper tell a story to illustrate how scientists can possibly be misled in genetics research if they're not careful. And the story goes like this, So Robert, once upon a time there was an ethno geneticist who was looking for a subject to study, and he decided he would like to figure out why certain people eat with chopsticks

and others don't. So he rounded up a few hundred university students and he gave them questionnaires to find out how often they used chopsticks, and then he took cheek swabs to get DNA samples from each of them. So his lab ran DNA analysis and cross reference the responses to the questionnaire with the d N A and found a huge correlation between one particular genetic marker right in the middle of a region previously linked to other behavioral traits,

and the you of chopsticks. And so then this experiment was replicated. It was performed at several other universities and they all got the same result. So the original ethnogeneticist he celebrates. He decides it's time to call up the media and tell them I've found the chopsticks gene. It is a gene that makes people prone to eat with chopsticks. And this, again is correlation. And as we frequently point out, is that one of the golden rules of science is

that correlation is not necessarily causation. Right, anything that is causation should be correlated. But there are lots of things that are correlated that don't have a causal relationship with each other. And this could very well be one of those examples because in this story, unfortunately the geneticist discovers only several years later that this particular gene is actually a histo compatibility antigen gene that has nothing to do

with dining utensils. But it just happens to be in a real that's more common in people with recent Asian ancestry than with other ethnic groups. So the point is to illustrate that you could find a gene associated with a trait. The level of statistical correlation can be highly significant, and the test can be replicated many times, and it's still possible that your results are biologically meaningless. This gene has nothing to do with how you use your hands

or what kind of utensils you favor. It happens to be more common in a population who uses chopsticks more often for cultural reasons. It's a complete accident of culture, and it highlights a general problem with studying populations. If you don't understand and consider the population you're studying, it's possible to draw spurious correlations. Using similar naive logic, you could probably find a French accent gene or a support

for Russia's World Cup team gene. You know this. This does remind me um of an early experience taking my my son to a Chinese restaurant. My wife and I were there with him and uh, and he did not know how to use chopsticks at the time. He's now he's six years old and uses them extremely well. But when we first took him took into this Chinese restaurant, uh. Uh.

The the the owner of the restaurant came around. He was saying hi and uh and of course he noted that that my son is is ethnically Han Chinese, and he he said, he pointed out to he said, don't let him use the cheating chopsticks, you know once where you take and or HNDE. He says, don't let him

use those. Let him just figure it out because he has it in his d n A. Well, that's kind of a sweet story, but yeah, it operates on exactly the same principle, assuming that things that are actually just accidents of culture and history are somehow in the body, that there's something in the body that makes you that way, right, when really it is just a it is a it

is cultural information. It's a cultural it's cultural knowledge that has passed on and uh and in the case of learning how to use chopsticks, I will say that his his advice was, I think act completely sound. Uh. My son used to learn to use chopsticks. Uh, not by cheating and using some sort of rubber band h and a piece of paper rolled up. He used them by watching adults use them, imitating what they were doing, using them, you know, poorly for a while, and then using them

with competence as an adult. I'm pretty good with chopsticks, but I did start using them at a slightly later age. I wonder if I had started using them at an earlier age, when I still had that neuroplasticity window open, you know, if I had started using them as early as I used a fork, if if they feel more like an extension of my hand, just kind of this perfectly intuitive part of my body. Well, we could easily

come back to a lot of this. There's a lot of food left on the table, if you will, um, because indeed, like, how if you start earlier with chopsticks, are you in fact more skilled with them? And then there's the question of you know, why isn't chopsticks usage part of one's DNA, Like how long does something have to be around in human culture before it is part of our human genetic legacy. And then to what extent does does cultural knowledge uh make genetic information less important? Oh? Well,

you can certainly make that argument. I mean a big thing about what culture is is that culture is a great substitute for instinct You know, you don't need quite so many inborn instincts that are hardwired into the brain. If you have children who are born as learning machines and adults who can teach them what to do. Yeah, a lesson is learned by the individual in months, whereas it would be learned by the species across what a

million years? Yeah, and I like that about us. I like that it's fun being a human because you can grow up learning to use fork and knife, or you can grow up learning to use chopsticks. You know, the brain works either way. If we were some kind of lizard that just had like a hardwired fork and knife nervous system and chopsticks would never make sense to us. That would be a tragedy. It would it would it would be it would be a world without all these

fabulous inventions, including chopsticks. All right, So there you have it. Uh. An introduction to the history of chopsticks, to the use of chop sticks, and then the way it changes the way we interact with our food, think about food, et cetera. If you would like to check out more episodes of this podcast, head on over to Inventions dot show, dot UK, dot du and and you will find all the episodes of Invention that we have unleashed thus far. Big thanks

to our audio producer, Bruce Dickinson. Invention is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.