David's World

July 17, 2007

Good, simple, elaborate design from Asia: chopsticks and bookmarks

I've received two beautiful presents from Asia lately. The Chinese bookmarks on the right are finely cut-outs from paper in different colors, showing young ladies in cocktail dresses (or other interesting attire). Also, I now have my personal chopsticks, imported from Japan. They are not your average break-eat-throwaway eating tools - they're manufactured with attention to detail. They are kept in their box made from dark wood, and I've been told that people used to have their personal waribashi. This may become modern again in some places, as China now levies a 5-percent tax on their wooden chopsticks.

The practice of carrying your own chopsticks goes back to a time when most people ate with their hands and the only way to ensure that chopsticks were available was to bring your own. This was a common practice in China, Korea and Japan.

Believe it or not, it was much the same in Europe. and some people would carry ornate cases with their own cutlery. The fork and spoon are historically recent. Eating with your hands was the norm, even in wealthy and educated classes.

Voltaire once wrote that he often ate so fast that he bit his fingers!

Around the same time, a European visitor to the house of some Turkish nobility was amazed when his host announced that they were completely modern and ate in "the French style" with forks and spoons. When it came time to eat, everyone at the table picked up food with their fingers, stuck it on their forks and then ate it.

I've now lived in the far east for 20 years and have found it's very helpful to always travel with a pair of chopsticks and a chinese spoon so I have something to eat food bought on the street back in my hotel room. I kept loosing chopsticks on trips because they would get mixed up with other people's chopsticks so I found some tacky bright red plastic chopsticks at Ikea in Hong Kong almost ten years ago and I haven't lost another pair since.