If there is any proof that the chinese people of the past didn’t possess any creativity or imagination, I am willing to accept it as a fact, rather wholesomely. It had always bothered me that why would anyone want to eat rice or anything else with two dangling sticks in their hands, and not use more informally easier methods – say spoon, or get even – hands!
A quick search on google for “history of chopsticks” revealed to me that Chopsticks were originally invented 5000 years ago in China (where else?!). The need for chopsticks seems rather strange. Ancient chinese used to cook huge chunk of food in one go, and used to use use sticks and twigs to retrieve them from the boiler pot. Eventually, they realized that it was better to cook food in smaller chunks, and hence the size of sticks used to be reduced. Next they realized that they could infact use it to eat the food itself!
But chopsticks themselves became popular due to teachings of Confucius – his preachings around chopsticks were more of a symbolic rather than its usefulness – He believed that knives should not be present on any food table, and hence chopsticks served as a greater use to symbolically note the same. And thus since then, chopsticks have immensly grown in popularity. In addition, chopsticks were believed to improve finger dexterity (aha!), and sharpen your brains. Also, indeed, chopsticks were believed to be superstitious objects – for example, if you dropped chopsticks, bad luck came your away (ewwww!)
So much for historical insight, a good 5000 years later, a me and my friend decided to visit this Mongolian grill. Leaving aside the grill, I decided to experiment with chopsticks and eat the rice. The first step was actually trying to catch it right – according to the dummies guide to chopsticks printed at back of the chopstick folder, was the first step: Catch the chopstick between your index finger and ring finger in a way that its end lies in base with the thumb, and is firm and does not move. Step two: Catch the second chop stick between your thumb and your first finger and balance it on you index finger – this should give you the dexterity to move this one chopstick.
Now using the movable chopstick, grab a bite of food between the firm handle and flexible handle and quickly globble it up.
Easier said than done! The fact was, half the time my chopsticks crossed up each other. The effect being, while I was trying hard to keep the firm chopstick “firm”, the other one refused to stay everything but firm. Half the time I couldn’t pick any morsel of food, and the other half of time I did manage to pick some food, I had to do a balancing act for a good few seconds to balance morsel. Next, fearing it might just drop any moment, I quickly bent my face towards the morsel and had it (and I always thought it was the other way round…). If I let the morsel of food stay any longer than 2 seconds between the chopsticks, then (a) either it would slip off between my chopsticks, or (b) my chopsticks would again cross up each other throwing up my food in air!
After about 15 minutes later, and just 5 morsels in my mouth, I decided to change my tactic. I used a fork instead! Sometimes, europeans were smarter.
Some other day, my valiant self will try this tactic again. I just can’t believe that half the earth’s population actually eats wth chopsticks and I cannot!