How come the Chinese reverted to using chopsticks despite having also invented the fork and spoon?
Also, why are chopsticks considered a unique Chinese invention? they are literally just sticks...
How come the Chinese reverted to using chopsticks despite having also invented the fork and spoon?
Because they're the best tool to use when eating meals in the Chinese style
Spoons are far better tools for eating rice though. You can barely even pick up rice with chopsticks unless you use a really weird grip style.
Chinese style meals is not just 'rice'
Enlighten me, besides rice, what else is there? Meats? Forks are better for that. Soups? Just use a spoon. Bread? Simply use your hands. Spoons and forks are purpose built for eating, chopsticks are just sticks...
Chinese style meals is when you have rice and a selection of 3+ dishes each served on the middle of the table
Each person has their own bowl of rice which is held in the hand
From the table each person picks out a piece from whichever dish they want to eat and they put it on their bowl of rice, eating some of the dish with the rice
Each piece needs to be small enough that it can be eaten with one or two bites, large enough that it can be picked up with chopsticks without any effort
And yet spoons and forks are still easier to use. How do the Chinese cope with this fact? Historically, the use of chopsticks has never been about convenience or elegance, it was always some cultural contrivance. Imagine basing your cultural identity around plain pieces of wood. They should feel embarrased.
Chinese do use spoons though.
For ramen for example chopsticks are way better than a fork to pick up the noodles, and the bite-sized veggies and sliced meat, and a spoon for the broth.
I'm not that good at using chopsticks, but it feels much more natural eating it with chopsticks, because it's prepared to be eaten with chopsticks.
It probably just seems better to use a fork to you because that's how you've learned to eat. If someone who's chinese came on here, I'm sure we'd get a whole speal on the superiority of the chopsticks, and that eating with a fork is "uncultured" or something.
kek c'mon anon don't be obtuse. Of course the Chinese eat more than just rice but it's a big staple of their diet. It's like saying Mexicans would be well-off eating beans entirely with chopsticks. It makes most dishes tedious to eat.
Or was the Chinese serving style developed so that they could use chopsticks easier?
These Chinese culinary style was designed around chopsticks and spoons because of Confucian autism.
Forks require food that won't fall apart when stabbed.
Why is it "reverted'? They're less complex to make but that doesn't mean they're a worse tool to eat with, they're just better for eating food prepared a different way.
They still have forks and knives, but those are primarily used in the kitchen to cut meat, veggies, etc into bite-size pieces that are easy to pick up with chopsticks.
Originally chopsticks were utensil used in the kitchen, but eventually they were also adopted as a utensil for eating as well.
>they're just better for eating food prepared a different way.
What cope is this? Every Asian restaraunt I've ever eaten at, I always request a spoon and fork. You don't need to teach people how to use a spoon and fork, people just know. You do, need to teach people how to properly use chopsticks. Why would you ever want to complicate the act of simply eating food when there is no advantages to doing so? Makes no sense
It may be simpler to use a fork and knife, but there is most definitely muscle memory involved in eating this way that you have to learn and acquire same as with chopsticks.
If you doubt that just look at a toddler trying to eat, clumsly grasping their fork in their fist jamming it into peas.
>how to use fork
pick up and proceed to stab food
>how to use chopsticks
The learning process usually starts with a proper initial placement of fingers, per standard grip. It is crucial for learners to understand how to hold both sticks firmly in the hand, as extensions of fingers.
The next step involves learning the right motion of fingers, in order to move the top stick from the closed posture where tips of chopsticks touch, to the open posture where tips are extended wide apart for embracing food items. The open posture and the closed posture define the two ends of maximum standard grip motion. In most eating situations, tips of chopsticks need not be extended this wide apart.
Both finger placement and standard grip motion rely on the thumb being flattened. With this flat thumb pose, the base of the thumb can exert enough force to pin the bottom stick against the knuckle of the ring finger, and against the purlicue. At the same time, the tip of the thumb pushes back against the index finger and the knuckle of the middle finger, as all three wield the top stick in concert.[39]
The shape of the flat thumb is such that the bottom stick is prevented from shaking loose, and from inching closer to the top stick, during repeated standard grip motion. Keeping the two chopsticks separated far enough, at the place they intersect with the thumb, is important for the standard grip. At the open posture, it allows tips to extend wide apart, without rear ends of chopsticks colliding. At the closed posture, it enables better control over tips of chopsticks.[B]
I don't know about you, but I don't just pick up and stab food with my fork. I hold it with a similar grip to how I hold a pencil. It's easier to just pick one up without previous experience and stab food, but we do develop a technique for how we use a fork beyond just stuffing it in our fist and stabbing shit.
Chopsticks are more versatile and more practical. The use of chopstics is spreading.
It isn't any harder, you just never tried. It only looks hard, but it isn't.
It's really easy, it's only hard to describe in words.
>The use of chopstics is spreading.
No its not. If anything their use is falling out of favor, especially in immigrant communities. There's no advantages to using chopsticks over conventional eating utensils, its not "more versatile". You shouldn't need training aids just to learn how to use an eating utensil. The reason chopsticks still exist is because of cultural contrivance. The Chinese hold onto chopsticks because its a big part of their culture. Thats really all there is to it. In a perfect world sporks would be more commonplace, but we don't live in a perfect world.
This, I dated a Chinese American girl who was second gen and her family didn’t even use chopsticks at home. Once they’re out of China it becomes more of a novelty they partake in at restaraunts
You can see them being used at least from mid tier cities and above in asian style or sushi restaurants. Especially noodles are often impossible to eat with a fork unless they are specifically italian.
You don't need training aids. The training aid is a contrievance made up by someone who never used them, similar to side wheels for a bike. I've never seen those or knew that they exist. It's pointless.
it wasn't even 5 years ago I would walk into a Chinese restaraunt and be handed Chopsticks by default unless I asked for a fork. Today, they'll just automatically give you a fork unless you request chopsticks.
You hold the bottom one with the bottom of your thumb against your ring finger. You hold it firm, it doesn't move. You hold the top one with your thumb against the index and middle fingers so that you can move it. It's not very hard. Try it.
I know how to use chopsticks, my Filipino friend taught me how, I could never get used to them though. I was born with a fork in my hand, its just how I am.
Sporks are worse forks/spoons
The only reason they're used is efficiency
>Every Asian restaraunt I've ever eaten at, I always request a spoon and fork.
AAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You're actually less evolved due to inbreeding and hitting a genetic bottle neck that makes you all look the same
What?
It's fucking embarassing when a person cannot handle chopsticks. It's like not being able to use a knife and fork as a grown man.
Not everyone likes you oily slop anon, there's a reason chink restaurants only survive in big cities.
Cope
>reverted
The spoon is far older than chopsticks.
Confucian autism.
Confucius say no miniature weapons at dinner table.
>confusion thought this was a weapon
was he retarded?
He did not. Chinese people use spoons. Chopsticks are a fork alternative, which were never common in China despite the Chinese inventing them. In ancient China spoons were more common than chopsticks, when gruel was the staple food, until noodles and bite size foods later became popular.
No he was british
Use your own hand akhi, Allah created your right arm to eat. Don't believe in invention aka bi'dah
It's also worth noting that chopsticks were contemporary with Europeans using hands, spoons, and knives to eat at the table, with the knives being actual cutting knives closer to hunting knives than butter knives. Forks were not in common usage until well over a millennia after chopsticks were adopted in China.
Chinese used chopsticks and spoons. That means Chinese used chopsticks instead of hands and knives. This had the benefit of keeping hands clean, as eating with hands or using a knife along with a thumb obviously made your hands dirty.
There is some thousand plus years of chopsticks vs hands/knives history rather than chopsticks vs forks. When forks came around, every Asian child had learned how to use chopsticks anyways, it kept their hands clean already, it was more convenient to carry and clean (it used to be customary to bring your own utensils in Europe and Asia), and they cost less.
It's also worth noting that noodles led to Chinese adopting chopsticks over spoons, it let to Italians adopting forks a millennium later over a literal wooden stick that they were using previously because they apparently weren't clever enough to rub two sticks together.
Forks were invented by the Byzantines and the oldest spoons were found in Egypt.
Forks were invented by Chinese before Byzantium existed
Because sticks have longer range. You can have foot long chopsticks to grab that piece of human flesh thats too far for a spoon to reach. Chinks eat together on massive round tables and place all the dishes in the middle. Guess youve never been to Asia huh
that escalated quickly
>pike vs sword
Timeline of chopsticks and forks
>~2000 BC, Chinese invent fork but not commonly used
>~500 BC, Confucius says no miniature weapons, no cutting and no stabbing at the dinner table
>~100 AD, Wheat becomes more common in China, as well as noodles and chopsticks overtake the spoon as the common utensil in China
>Meanwhile forks exist in Europe but are also uncommon and Europeans keep eating with their hands and knives because Confucius never told Europeans to stop that
>~1000 AD, western Europeans get triggered by Byzantine usage of forks saying god provided man with natural forks called fingers but other Italians at the the same are using a literal wooden stick like a giant toothpick as one of the common eating utensils and realize forks are better for eating noodles than a toothpick
Could it be so simple as that chopsticks are just more fun to use?
>Eurocentrism again
We invented chopsticks BECAUSE we are evolved. We had forks but stabbing your food like a caveman is primitive so we invented chopsticks to pick up food elegantly. Western barbarians wouldn't understand
In the Tang Dynasty the Chinese began adhering to the idea of precut food during preparation for ease of consumption.
Then by the Song-Qing Dynasty, pic related becamr very affordable that even the meanest peasant had porcelain. Yo protect its glaze from wear only the chopsticks and the clay spoon remained on the Chang dining table.