The red beans are too small.
I can’t grab it. I can’t grab it.
where we uncover the stories of the food we eat.
In this season, we’re going back to basics,
to the building blocks of Chinese flavor.
Let's talk about chopsticks.
Chopsticks are a pair of equal-length sticks.
You pick food up with them.
Or stir, separate, and flip.
Over a billion people use chopsticks.
And it all started from China.
The first known pair of chopsticks
are believed to be over 3,000 years old.
They were found in the ruins of Yin,
China’s capital during the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BC).
Chopsticks were invented in northern China.
And the reason, according to some studies of food scholars,
was that the people, because of the climate,
people would like to eat food hot.
This is professor Q. Edward Wang.
He wrote a book about the history of chopsticks.
They were possibly used for other things as well,
because you can make fire
and you can also pick up other things and so on.
The spoon for a long time was considered the main utensil.
The main food grain that people ate at the time was millet.
The best way to cook millet was to make it like a porridge.
It’s best to eat it with a spoon.
Chopsticks became an eating utensil
possibly around the fourth century BC.
Around this time, the Chinese diet started changing.
Food was getting smaller and more delicate,
and dishes like noodles, dumplings, and dim sum were created.
They also discovered millstones to grind seeds into oil.
This meant they could stir-fry food
that’s chopped in smaller pieces.
You can use only chopsticks to eat both the stir-fry dishes
as well as the main food, that's the rice.
Are chopsticks really good for picking up small things?
That depends on how you hold them.
We asked Robin, who’s been an etiquette teacher for 10 years.
The correct way to hold chopsticks
is to use our thumb, index, and middle fingers
to hold one stick first.
Then we put another stick through the space between our thumb
and our index finger,
and rest it on our ring finger.
But what if we hold chopsticks in a different way?
So we held a competition to see if Robin’s way was better.
The person who picks up the most red beans in a minute wins.
The red beans are too small.
My hands are trembling again.
I can’t grab it. I can’t grab it.
Robin was the winner.
I won’t say there is a correct way to hold chopsticks,
but there’s a better way as we saw in your results.
This is professor Chen Yi-lang.
He studies how chopsticks are used.
There are mainly 2 ways to hold chopsticks.
One is like a pair of pincers.
The other is like using a pair of scissors.
Robin uses the traditional pincer method.
Chopsticks are like a lever.
The food is the load.
The sticks hinge at the fulcrum,
between your thumb and index finger.
And the effort comes from the force you use to move the sticks.
The pincer method can move in 3 ways:
Left, right, or closing the tips.
This method is more precise and stable.
When you hold them like a pair of scissors,
it makes it hard to move the chopsticks around.
The scissors method makes it difficult to pick up traditional food
like peanuts and glutinous rice balls.
Because the chopsticks point outwards,
the food slips through easily.
The muscle between the thumb and the index finger
is controlling the chopsticks.
This requires more strength
and yet it makes it more difficult to control the chopsticks.
If you have used chopsticks this way for many years,
you don’t feel the difference.
But if you compare yourself with others,
you will see the difference.
Okay, I want to use chopsticks the right way.
How long will it take to undo my muscle memory?
In Japan, there are schools that specialize
in teaching people how to use chopsticks.
The training process is long, up to 3 months.
When I was a kid, (my relatives would) hit my fingertips
if I didn’t hold mine properly.
There is a very strict way of using chopsticks in Chinese culture.
If you stick a pair of chopsticks straight up into a bowl of rice,
because we only did that in olden days during funeral rituals,
the elders would be angry. It’s like cursing.
We don’t knock chopsticks against bowls
and plates to make sounds.
Because only beggars did this in the past.
Using chopsticks to toss food around
and look for the piece of food you want is also very unhygienic.
These taboos come from Chinese cultural traits, like filial piety.
When I teach people about Chinese etiquette,
I often start with chopsticks and table manners.
The practice of using chopsticks has spread across the world, especially in Asia.
Different cultures have adapted the design
to their own cuisine.
Pointed chopsticks, because Japanese people eat more fish
so they can separate the meat from the bones.
But if you eat like stir-fry dishes in China,
then the pointy chopsticks are not as strong and sturdy
as the ones that people use in China.
Flat ones, Koreans prefer metal ones,
but they also want to save material.
Even people from western cultures are familiar with chopsticks,
although some are still baffled by them.
So why do the Chinese prefer to use chopsticks?
In a Chinese meal,
we prepare and cut the food first before serving,
so we don’t need to use too much strength to take the food.
It’s more important to use a tool that is precise and stable.
Chopsticks are an essential tool to any Chinese person.
Chinese people like to use chopsticks
due to our culinary habits and lifestyle.
Chopsticks are a symbol of Chinese food culture.
Up next,
We’ll talk about bamboo steamers, a dim sum essential.
Stay tuned.