Chinese culture in chopsticks
Xu Feng's Encyclopedia of Knowledge
In the past two days, a luxury brand's inappropriate remarks about China have been exposed, which has aroused the dissatisfaction of the majority of Chinese. In addition, the brand also filmed an advertisement for eating pizza with Chinese chopsticks, in which the female model dined with Chinese pronunciation, arrogant tone and various strange postures. I don't know if these people understand Chinese chopsticks, or maybe they don't want to know at all. Some foreign high-end luxury brands earn chinese money, but they regard the trust and respect of Chinese consumers as a child's play, ostensibly shouting "love to respect Chinese culture", but subconsciously there is obvious arrogance and prejudice. Let's pick up chopsticks and understand the Chinese culture contained in chopsticks.
There are 3 most popular ways for humans to eat: with fingers, with forks, and with chopsticks. People who grab food with their fingers live in many parts of Africa, the Middle East, Indonesia and the Indian subcontinent, with fork-wielders mainly distributed in Europe and North and South America, and chopsticks-wielding people mainly in the East Asian continent. Chinese is the main body of the group that uses chopsticks and the creator of chopsticks.
Chopsticks originated in China, and in ancient times they were called 箸 (箸者, 助也, meaning a tool to help eat), also known as 筯. Because the words "箸" and "stay" are consonant, "dwelling" has the meaning of stopping, which is an unlucky word, so it is called "chopsticks" in the opposite sense. This is where the name chopsticks come from.
When were chopsticks invented?
Who invented chopsticks? We have no way of verifying it. Zheng Xuan of the Book of Rites notes the clouds: "Paint creatures with soil, and eat them with cannons." "It is said that the ancestors wrapped the millet in leaves, pasted it with mud and put it in the fire to cook. A simpler way is to put the grain into the fire ash, from time to time with the branches to pluck, so that the grain gets evenly heated before eating, perhaps inspired in the process, one branch gradually becomes two, the branch is replaced by bamboo, the most primitive chopsticks appear.
The earliest chopsticks found in China are copper chopsticks excavated from Yin Ruins in Anyang City, Henan Province. Chopsticks are called 箸 in ancient times, and the King of Gong is the first king to use ivory. Sima Qian also wrote in the "History of the Family of Zong Weizi": "纣 is an elephant basket, and the jizi sighs: If he is an elephant, he will be a jade cup; for a jade cup, he will think of something precious and strange in the distance and be royal." Since then, the gradual rise of the Yuma Palace has been unable to vibrate. Although this is a statement of the extravagant life of the King of Sui and the fear of the courtiers, it provides the most valuable written historical material for us to trace the birth and development of the ivory fence from the court events caused by the ivory basket. As the monarch of the last Dynasty of the Shang Dynasty, it is estimated that refined ivory rods had appeared on the mainland more than 3,000 years ago.
Chinese the earliest use of knives and forks, not chopsticks
In fact, in the beginning, our Chinese ancestors also used knives and forks instead of chopsticks. Knives and forks are Chinese invented by us.
The earliest bone cutlery knife in the world is now found at the hemudu site in Zhejiang Province, 7,000 years ago. You can imagine that the Neolithic people basically lived a life of drinking blood, and the best tool to deal with meat was of course the knife, so the wise Chinese ancients first applied the knife to the diet. However, at that time, people called the knives used on the table "dagger". The daggers used by modern people were originally used for diet when they were produced. Look at the bronze dagger unearthed below, which has two practical functions: one is equivalent to a spoon, and the other is equivalent to a dinner knife.
In the pre-Qin dynasty, this "dagger" actually evolved from the knife, and later, with the development of food culture, the two functions were separated, forming a knife and a spoon. "Dagger" later only represented spoon, and the word "dagger" was also extended to delicacy and delicacy in ancient times. We used to call the deceased mother "妣", and the "妣" in the oracle bone is "dagger", which represents the mother who cooks.
The cutlery knife is the oldest tableware in human history, followed by the fork of the tableware. Some bone forks have been found in the Qijia cultural site in the northwest of the mainland, dating back at least 4,000 years. They were unearthed together, indicating that they were used in sets at the time. In the Shang Dynasty, the fork became two teeth and became smaller. It was with the spoon and bone knife, indicating that the fork, spoon, and knife were three matching pieces at that time. Tableware has also been unearthed in some sites and tombs of the Shang Dynasty on the mainland, which indicates that knives and forks were the main tableware used by people during the Shang Dynasty.
Later, more than 50 pieces of copper knives and bronze forks were unearthed in a Warring States tomb in Luoyang, indicating that the Warring States also used knives and forks. Gansu Jiuquan unearthed the Eastern Han Dynasty copper fork, Guangdong unearthed the Eastern Jin Dynasty iron fork, Gansu Zhangxian unearthed the Yuan Dynasty fork table knife, at the same time in Shandong Jiaxiang also unearthed knives and forks, there are also specially placed knives and forks of the bamboo sheath. This shows that the use of knives and forks continued until the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Chinese why chopsticks are used instead of knives and forks
The earliest chopsticks in China are the 6 copper brass heads found in Tomb 1005 of Yin Ruins in Anyang. That's what it's for eating. Therefore, scholars believe that chopsticks were used as tableware in the Shang Dynasty.
Why use chopsticks instead of knives and forks? This is the result of the development of Chinese food culture.
During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, Chinese cooking techniques got rid of their primitive state and entered the civilized period of diet. Let's take a look at the standard diet of the royals and nobles of the Western Zhou Dynasty. At this time, the most representative is the "Eight Treasures of the Zhou Dynasty".
This "eight treasures" are the chef's pre-processing of food, and the process is very complicated. The ingredients are processed into large and small pieces suitable for the entrance in advance, and the dishes that come out have been cut and prepared, so of course, when eating, they are no longer divided with knives and forks, as long as they are sandwiched with chopsticks and sent to the mouth. Because the "Eight Treasures of the Zhou Dynasty" were the originators of various local cuisines in China, chopsticks became the mainstream tableware of ancient Chinese cuisine.
The "Eight Treasures of the Zhou Dynasty" consists of 2 rice and 6 dishes: "Chun Boil" (meat soy sauce poured with rice), "Chun Mu" (meat soy sauce poured with rice), "Cannon Porcupine" (simmered fried stewed suckling pig), "Cannon Dumpling" (simmered fried stewed ewe lamb), "Mash Zhen" (roast beef, sheep, deer's tenderloin), "Stain" (sake lees beef and mutton), "Boiled" (similar to five-spiced beef jerky), "Liver" (grilled dog liver in net oil).
Different diets result in different ways of eating. In West Asia and continental Europe, where meat was the main food, the dinner knife was always an important eating tool for them, and later they invented the fork. The dietary structure based on agricultural products and supplemented by meat and vegetables has laid the foundation for China's food culture. Meat is scarce, so the "soup" cooked with a small amount of meat and vegetables becomes the main dish. The bamboo tablets excavated from the Mawangdui No. 1 Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province, recorded the dishes that accompanied the burial, of which the staple meat dishes except for one piece of fish meat, that is, twenty-four ding soups. Soups are better able to release the flavor of the meat, and when meat is limited, cut into pieces and put into the soup, which is replenished with vegetables. To flexibly clip vegetables and meat, the function of the spoon is not fully realized, and "holding" can easily clip dishes.
In the Shang Zhou and later Spring and Autumn Warring States periods, it was the nobles who used chopsticks, and eating with chopsticks was a symbol of social status at that time. After that, it was slowly popularized to the people and replaced the knife and fork. At that time, the Central Plains civilization, which was dominated by Chinese culture, paid attention to the "distinction between Huayi", and it was necessary to distinguish its advanced civilization from the surrounding nomads, and the dietary characteristics of the nomads were still mainly meat-eating, inseparable from knives and forks. Therefore, chopsticks have become a representative of advanced culture.
Later, the ethnic minorities around the Central Plains were influenced by Chinese civilization and also began to improve their status and began to use chopsticks. But what if you still have to cut meat and eat meat? As a result, there was a "combination of knives and chopsticks". The knife and chopsticks are used and packed together for easy carrying.
The invention of chopsticks is related to noodles
Some experts believe that the invention of chopsticks is related to noodles. In 2005, the world's oldest noodle object, 4,000 years old, was discovered at the Lajia site in Qinghai, which may have made the appearance of chopsticks logical.
The ancient noodles discovered by archaeologists are well-preserved, long and thin, yellow in color, and contained in an inverted, sealed bowl. Scientists have determined that the noodles are made from two grains, millet and sorghum, which is indigenous to China and was widely cultivated 7,000 years ago. Modern North American and European noodles are usually made from wheat flour.
This discovery gave the invention of noodles to Chinese, and from the level of production, noodles were a popular food at that time. But it is obviously impractical to eat noodles with a spoon dagger, and the ancestors who have long given up the habit of grasping by hand may have started eating noodles with bone chopsticks from this time. The appearance of noodles is perhaps the biggest reason for the emergence of chopsticks.
It is worth noting that although for a long time, the ancients used daggers and daggers to eat at the same time, the status of daggers gradually replaced daggers, but it began in the Han Dynasty. Noodles with soup cakes as the predecessor also became popular in the Han Dynasty, and by the Song Dynasty, noodles have developed different varieties of fried chicken noodles, bamboo shoot spicy noodles, and rolled fish noodles. Perhaps, it is the noodles that enter the homes of ordinary people that make chopsticks the main eating tool for people.
When chopsticks spread abroad
Chopsticks have spread to countries around China, such as Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries, forming a tradition of using chopsticks for meals in East Asia. The custom of using chopsticks in these countries continues to this day.
After the 6th century, there were frequent exchanges between China and Japan, and Japanese envoys went to the Tang Dynasty many times to learn Chinese culture. In 608, a Chinese delegation headed by Pei Shiqing was invited to visit Japan. At the welcome banquet, Prince Shengde entertained the guests in the Chinese way.
After the 8th century, it gradually became popular in Japan, and at that time, it was called "Tang Zhen" in Japan, which is derived from the Tang Dynasty. In the 1970s, When Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka visited China, he said to Zhou En: "Your Excellency, your Excellency, Japan's custom of using chopsticks was imported from China, and China's chopsticks have brought the mainland the ideal tableware that is both civilized and convenient. "Japan also improved chopsticks and invented the "cutting chopsticks", which is the disposable chopsticks we use today.
However, the first impression of foreigners outside of East Asia when they see chopsticks is mostly novel and surprising. The Italian missionary Matteo Ricci, who came to China during the Ming Dynasty, recorded in his Notes on China the custom of Chinese using chopsticks to eat: "They eat without knives, forks or spoons, but with very smooth chopsticks, about a half palm, which they can easily put any kind of food in their mouths without the help of fingers." The food is cut into small pieces when it is delivered to the table, and those that are easily clipped open with chopsticks. ”
In today's globalized world, the use of chopsticks to eat is no longer the patent of Chinese or East Asians, the United States will import tens of millions of pairs of bamboo chopsticks from China every year, and France has even set up the "Golden Chopsticks Award" to recognize the outstanding operators of Chinese and Asian restaurants. Today, chopsticks with a history of 3,000 years convey the unique food culture of the East and are playing their role on tables around the world.