筷子文化

筷子的历史

Having their origins in China, chopsticks are used in many Asian countries. The first chopsticksweremade

fromboneandjade.IntheSpringandAutumnperiod,copperandiron chopstickscame into being.

ChopsticksplayanimportantroleinChinesefoodculture.Chopsticksare called"Kuaizi"inChinese and were called"Zhu" in ancient times. Chinese people havebeen using kuaizi as one of the main tableware for more than 3,000 years.It was recorded in Liji (The Book of Rites) that chopsticks were used in the ShangDynasty (1600 BC - 1100 BC). It was mentioned in Shiji (the Chinese history book)by Sima Qian (about 145 BC) that Zhou, the last king of the Shang Dynasty (around1100 BC), used ivory chopsticks. Experts believe the history of wood or bamboochopsticks can be dated to about 1,000 years earlier than ivory chopsticks. Bronzechopsticks were invented in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1100 BC - 771 BC). Lacquerchopsticks fromthe Western Han (206 BC - 24 AD) were discovered in Mawangdui,China. Gold and silver chopsticks became popular in the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907).It was believed that silver chopsticks could detect poisons in food.

The History of Chopsticks

Though(虽然)chopsticks are used in many Asian(亚洲的)countries today,they have their beginnings in China. Chinese history says that the Chinesehad chopsticks as far back as the Xia Dynasty(朝代). In the Spring

andAutumnPeriodcopper(铜)andironchopsticksappeared. WitheHanDynastycamelacquered(上漆)chopsticksfollowedbygoldandsilverchopsticks in later dynasties. Today we have chopsticks made of plastic.The most expensive are made from elephants tusks and hard green stone.筷子的历史

Chopsticksplay an important rolein Chinesefoodculture. Chopsticksareapairof small equal-length taperedsticks, which aregenerally believedtohaveoriginatedin ancient China, showingthespecial longstandingcivilization of thenation. They arethetraditional eatingutensilsof China, andarealsowidely usedin Japan, Korea, Taiwan, andVietnam.

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Thepiecesof foodweresmall enough that they negatedtheneedfor knivesatthedinner table, andchopsticksbecamestapleutensils. It isalsothought thatConfucius, avegetarian, advisedpeoplenot touseknivesat thetablebecausekniveswouldremindthem of theslaughterhouse.

For westernerswho areusedtotheknifeandfork, tolearn howtousechopsticksisn’t an easy task, but onceyou master them, they aresimpleandconvenient.Nowonder many western scholarspraisechopsticksagreat crystallization ofChinesewisdom.

筷子的起源

According to historical evidence, the Chinese have used chopsticks since the time of theShang Dynasty (ca 1766 - 1066 BCE). The first sticks used as eating utensils were twigs thatthe hungriest eaters used to scoop food into their mouths. This invention obviously broughtadded convenience to eating as the sticks made it easier to handle steaming hot food. Thesame ingenious idea was undoubtedly conceived in other parts of the world as well, butevidence shows that elsewhere spoon-like utensils eventually achieved greater popularity atthe expense of chopsticks.

筷子流传的原因

The reason why chopsticks became a fixture of the Chinese table setting may be the fact thatlocal food is often chopped up into small pieces and only rapidly heated, which makes itespecially suitable for chopsticks. Another more philosophical explanation for the developmentis that the revered philosopher and vegetarianKong Zi, orConfucius, would have hadantipathies towards handling knives at the dinner table. He considered using knives to tear atfood to be a show of barism. According to this theory then, the fact that chopsticks becamethe main eating utensils is evidence that civilized behavior gradually replaced a culture markedby brutish knife toting. Whatever the truth may be, the use of chopsticks spread from China toKorea and Japan around the year