Invention Playlist 4: Chopsticks

Chopsticks may seem like a basic invention, but this invention has a fascinating history...

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Episode Transcript

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(01:13):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. I
have to admit that I love chopsticks and a kind
of embarrassing and 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

(01:34):
noodles with chopsticks. I love eating sushi with chopsticks. So
sometimes I just eat sushi with my hands, as as
you often do. 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

(01:56):
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
tomato 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.

(02:16):
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

(02:37):
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's sticks. Use your manual

(02:59):
decks charity to manipulate food with them. Uh. 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,

(03:21):
in part because you 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

(03:44):
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 retail, doesn't it.
That's like a fair that's like a Cinderella type punishment.

(04:05):
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 our our our use of utensils, it's about

(04:25):
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

(04:47):
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 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

(05:11):
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

(05:33):
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
doubt the Guinness Book of World Records though, Joe, Yeah,
no 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

(05:55):
they don't make sense for so much are foods that
require a great deal of cutting and carving. Uh. You know,
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.

(06:16):
You know, when you mentioned pairing a knife with chopsticks,
there at least once was a product called fork and
knife chopsticks. Have you seen this? There's like 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

(06:39):
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 think 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,

(06:59):
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 seller as far
as I could tell. Chopsticks themselves, however, of course, are

(07:23):
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. Yeah. If anything,
that the big take home is if you like using chopsticks,
if you find yourself regularly using chopsticks, invest in a

(07:43):
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? While they came from China and uh and
as as we were talking about with our researcher for
this program of Scott Benjamin. They propped up prior to

(08:06):
d b C, though 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,

(08:27):
sometimes you see it. Uh stated that we're really looking
at more four hundred c e 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,

(08:47):
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
levee really rakes on the idea. People do like to
come up with origin stories for things, though even when
there isn't a clear origin story, well, that's often part

(09:08):
of the fund 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

(09:29):
something pages. It's a book by Q. Edward Wang that
is called Chopsticks, A Cultural and Culinary History polished in
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 Shot dynasty,

(09:49):
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,

(10:13):
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 hero 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

(10:38):
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

(11:02):
the floodwaters. And one of these legends is that day
you 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 get back to work,

(11:24):
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 that the changes the way you do things. And
this is this is likely exactly how chop sticks emerged

(11:47):
in just the darkness of prehistory. Is the use of
found twigs, um, you know, maybe the twigs of him
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

(12:08):
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.

(12:32):
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

(12:52):
of the pinching, grasping action of the skeleton itself. They
feel like more like they emerge out of the skima
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,

(13:15):
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 means
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,

(13:36):
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,

(13:58):
you will find um like bronze chopsticks or what are
believed to be chop sticks in the tombs of the
of the ruins of Yin in Hanan 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 b C as
a as a possibility for early archaeological evidence of chopsticks.

(14:22):
So I've also read that the that some of these
bone 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

(14:45):
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.

(15:08):
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 usage.
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

(15:29):
to eat and survive and develop all the other technologies
that uh, that the culture may develop. Uh but uh,
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

(15:50):
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.
For example, he cites a passage from jun Z who
lived three forty five b c uh and and jen

(16:11):
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 trees 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

(16:33):
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 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

(16:56):
to becoming the primary means of consuming said food, Because,
for instance, many of us use a ladle in the kitchen,
you know, or one of those of those deep seated
uh spoons that that are that are just relatling 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,

(17:21):
you could technically do it, but you probably don't. Um.
Speaking of Soon'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. You

(17:45):
can move pretty much any kind of food. You could
eat steak with a spoon, right, Yeah, it's I Actually
I'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 and 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

(18:06):
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 we've just
hit on here, just the ultimate practical practicality of the spoon.
But but something else that Wayne points out is that

(18:29):
from antiquity up through 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. And boiling is key here because
this was the age of boiling uh stews and soups.

(18:52):
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, 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, whing rights wheat becomes the primary
grain and so you get wheat noodles, you get wheat dumplings,

(19:13):
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 can tend
to be a little slippery and you're trying to like
balance it on the spoon. No, you're better off grabbing

(19:34):
it with the chopsticks. And then from the eleventh century onward,
he writes that rice, of course becomes increasingly popular. Uh
and since rice clumps, chopsticks can be used to 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,

(19:56):
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

(20:18):
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.

(20:38):
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

(20:59):
of course in kitchen and then uh 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,

(21:21):
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 gradual change going
on here, and there are some notable ancient accounts, uh

(21:41):
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 BC. Okay, take me there, take me to this
A and binge. He's best remembered ash. What's the term

(22:03):
party animal? Yeah, definitely a party animal, A real blue do,
a real blue dough. 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.

(22:26):
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,

(22:49):
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

(23:10):
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 going to
become a symbol of decaant 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

(23:31):
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,

(23:53):
you would also pluck cuts of meat from the roasting
pillars that are around you, like a forest. This is
like a satanic Charlie and 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

(24:14):
comment on that. Well, it's just it's a decadent diet
to have, you know, only the weirdest and the strange.
Is this like uh, Monty Burns on The Simpsons wanting
to wear the pelts of various exotic and endangered animals.
See my best Yes, chopstick etiquette time, we just gotta
have that jump in and invade whatever we were talking about, right,

(24:36):
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

(24:56):
of rice, as this is a portent of death. Yeah,
so 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.
So this makes sense. This is but this is something
that would be very easy to miss for say a
Western or traveling in China, which is why you see

(25:18):
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

(25:39):
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 some body, or or certainly any kind of situation

(26:03):
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

(26:23):
of this cultural idea that this is how one should
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(28:14):
and yes, I despise every minute of it. And she
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(28:37):
to me the wisdom of the Great Confucius as it
concerns utensil 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 I just finally began
to watch Michael Woods The Story of China, which is

(29:00):
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, 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 PPS in America. UM.

(29:23):
But the first episode does a wonderful job of breaking
down just how uh political core Confucian teachings really were
governing the about how you know you've governed the moral
character of a people via the ruler. So the ruler
and and and his morals, they're the wind to the
people's field of grass, dictating the nature of the people. Now,

(29:47):
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 Confucious because this is
the latinization of Khong Fuzi a ka Master Kong Uh.

(30:07):
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
in 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.

(30:29):
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

(30:50):
what extent this impacted the actual use of meat in
Chinese cuisine, but perhaps due 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

(31:11):
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.

(31:36):
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
Empire of Signs by the French critic and Simatitian roll
On Barth. It was first published in nineteen seventy and
then in English translation by Richard Howard in the early

(31:56):
nineteen eighties, and it's kind of a semiotic travel log
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

(32:17):
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
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.

(32:39):
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,

(33:03):
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

(33:25):
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

(33:48):
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 actor that when eating
with chopsticks, one does not make artificial cuts in the
meat or in the food in general as it is

(34:09):
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 separations. So I
can think about like, if you have a you know,
a stir fried little head of baby back joy on
your plate and you're eating with chopsticks, the leaves come
away whole as you peel them off, or or yeah,

(34:32):
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 the 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

(34:54):
like an utter slab while using chopsticks. It's well within
within range or 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

(35:15):
kind of like this beautiful shoveling action that that I think.
I think it might be a sort of traddy. 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 that it's okay to slurp,
like slurping the soup in um in in certain Eastern

(35:35):
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

(35:56):
older woman there, a Chinese woman who turned 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

(36:18):
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

(36:40):
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 picture 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 feast
on the bones beneath the table. Uh. Like, I'm somehow

(37:03):
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 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

(37:26):
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

(37:48):
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. At scarce resources and a
growing population in China demanded that smaller portions of food
be cooked faster over less fuel. Um. Thus chopsticks are

(38:09):
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?

(38:31):
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 and hot. We're not preferring
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

(38:57):
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 uses in an
established set of eating tools in China between three hundred
and six hundred C. So this this is the point

(39:19):
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. Yeah,
chopsticks and spoon they are the Buddy cop movie of
my mouth. All Right, we're gonna take one more break,

(39:40):
and when we come back, we're going to discuss the
legacy of chopsticks. On the latest season of the Next
Question with Katie correct podcast, Katie dives into Well Katie
Here exclusive podcast only conversations between Katie and the people
who made her memoir Going They're Possible. We spent a

(40:01):
lot of time together around a dining room table here
and in the city, and you know, it was a
very intense experience. All episodes of Next Question with Katie
Couric are available now. Listen on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Being a
real estate agent isn't about listing houses. It's about connecting

(40:23):
to people. I need to find new buyers every day,
so I promote my listings using radio commercials from my
heart at builder dot com. Now every time I have
an open house, it's a full house. A custom radio
ad from my Heartie Builder is the fast, affordable way
to drive customers to your business put the power of
radio to work for you. Get started now at i

(40:45):
Heeart ad builder dot com. I'm Colleen with joined me
the host of Eating Wall Broke podcast While I eat
a meal created by self made entrepreneurs, influencers and celebrities
over a meal they once a when they were broke.
Today I have the lovely AJ Crimson, the official Princess
of comfin Asia, Kidnik and Asia. This is the professor.

(41:08):
We're here on Eating while Broke and today I'm gonna
break down my meal that got me through the time
when I was broken. Listen to Eating While Broke on
the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcast or wherever
you get your podcasts. All right, 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

(41:29):
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. Apparently
that is just that's not cool. Yeah, that's when you
have to you have to really break down for a

(41:51):
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,

(42:12):
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.

(42:33):
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

(42:54):
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 utilizing
the freedom of the utensil. But on the other hand,

(43:16):
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

(43:37):
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

(43:58):
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 head equette that we can all
take take with us, because sometimes it is hard to
resist again for that choice, uh, that choice delicious shrimp

(44:21):
in there in the noodles. Well, I find myself maybe
maybe this is bad manners in general, but I find
myself in 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

(44:42):
that all just arranged just right before I shovel. Oh yeah,
and then if you're like me, you run the risk
of its slipping. 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 a four different element. It's
lined up the one by buffet, right, But with chopsticks.

(45:03):
Sometimes when I try and do that, uh, there's it
can be an act of folly because ultimately maybe I
should be eating it piece by piece in a more
chopsticks friendly manner. You know, one thing I've noticed when
I watch I watch a decent amount of cooking videos
with you know, actual chefs in the Asian traditions, like

(45:24):
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 there, like chopsticks used in a walk,
chopsticks used for say, tempora frying. Yeah, and then you
will also see with with modern uh you know, gourmet chefs.

(45:46):
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 you make sure everything is
posit just right. Um, that's essentially the same principle. I mean,
what are tweezers but less proper chopsticks. Have you ever

(46:09):
seen our coworker Dylan Fagin 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

(46:30):
no nation, they're they're completely honorless. So it's okay to
use chopsticks. If anything you have, you run the risk
of 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,

(46:50):
but I also admit I frequently used the disposable ones
and feel bad about how many I've probably sent to
the landfill in my lifetime. Yeah. Some of the of
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

(47:11):
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

(47:33):
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

(47:53):
longer for men and shorter for women eight inches for men,
seven inches for women, and that the actual size of
chop sticks 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 easier on
lacquer covered ornate cookware. Again, you're not going to be

(48:14):
stabbing and slicing with fork and knife on it. You're
going to be more politely poking at them with 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 we also find
various other uh substances, both currently and in the past, bamboo, plastic, wood, bone,

(48:39):
stainless steel, us as well as for the wealthy titanium, gold, silver, againt, 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

(48:59):
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 and rotten eggs. These are all things that produce
hydrogen sulfide, which does turn silver black. Now, a few
other little tidbits about to chopstick use. Um Whang points

(49:23):
out in his book that you had the chopstick diet.
Japanese English Arthur Kamico 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

(49:43):
save her food more. Yeah, again it's presented a wigg
presented it as uh something to think about, not necessarily fact.
He also points out uh in fact. He points out
several times this idea of the chopsticks cultural sphere. This
was a term coined by Japanese writer Ishiki Hashiro and uh.

(50:06):
He argued that chopsticks require enhanced brain coordination and that
this improves 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

(50:28):
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 unstuff to boil your mind
in the future. Yes, I'd 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

(50:50):
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

(51:13):
two thousand paper by Hamer and Serota called Bewhere 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

(51:35):
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

(51:58):
responses to the question there 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 use of chopsticks. And so
then this experiment was replicated. It was performed at several
other universities and they all got the same result. So

(52:19):
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,

(52:39):
anything that is causation should be correlated. But there are
lots of things that are correlated that it 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 has

(53:00):
nothing to do with dining utensils, but it just happens
to be in allele 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,

(53:21):
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.

(53:42):
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 of an early experience taking my

(54:03):
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

(54:24):
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 and or a hand. 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

(54:44):
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

(55:06):
his advice was, I think act completely sound. Uh. My
son used to learned 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

(55:26):
with confidence 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 neuro plasticity 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

(55:47):
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 early 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

(56:08):
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

(56:30):
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, ye,
a lesson is learned by the individual in months, whereas
it would be learned by the species across what a

(56:51):
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

(57:12):
would be it would be a world without all these
fabulous inventions, including chopsticks. All right, today, you have another
episode of Invention. We can file that one away and
if you want to check out the files. If you
want to see other episodes of the show, head on
over to Invention Pod dot com. That is our website.
You'll find the other episodes as well as links out
to our social media accounts, and if you want to

(57:33):
discuss the show with other listeners, we would recommend going
to Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module. That's a
Facebook group where you know mostly we've talked about episodes
of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, but we're also happy
to discuss episodes of The Invention there as well. Huge
thanks to our friend Scott Benjamin for research assistance on
this show and to our excellent audio producer Torri Harrison.

(57:54):
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other suggested topic
for the future of Invention, or just to say hi
let us know how you found out about the show,
you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.

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tapes of Kobe when he was a teenager, just as
he was starting to glimpse his own greatness. It's about
the making of an icon. We weave together these tapes
with Kobe's high school coaches, his friends, and the figures
who knew him in his youth. All episodes are out

(59:10):
now so you can binge the whole thing. Listen to
I Am Kobe on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Gonzalez, the
host of s i s new podcast, Sports Illustrated Weekly.
Sports Illustrated has delivered some of the best storytelling in
sports for seventy years, and now that continues. On our show.

(59:34):
Each week, we'll dive deep into the best stories from
around the sports world. Sports Illustrated Weekly is available every
Wednesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now.