Volunteers enjoying Chinese food with chopsticks. You must be logged in to post a comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Email Address. Leave a Reply Want to join the discussion? Feel free to contribute! One distinct difference between Japanese and Chinese chopsticks was that the former were made from a single piece of bamboo that were joined at the base.
In addition, Japanese chopsticks were originally used solely for religious ceremonies. Regardless of their differences, chopsticks remained popular in both countries and are still the primary utensil of choice. While the early chopsticks were more often than not made of some cheap material, such as bamboo, later silver chopsticks were sometimes used during Chinese dynastic times in order to prevent food poisoning.
It was believed that silver utensils would turn black if they came into contact with any life threatening toxins. Unfortunately for those engaging in this practise, silver doesn't turn black when it touches the likes of cyanide or arsenic, among other poisons.
However, it most definitely can change colour if touched by garlic, onion or rotten eggs — all of which release hydrogen sulfide which reacts with the silver causing it to change colour. For anyone that has ever had difficulty eating rice with chopsticks, you may have wondered why anyone would choose this particular utensil for consuming such food with.
Millet was, and is, best cooked into porridge or gruel, for its grain size is smaller than rice. If millet were to be prepared like rice—brought to boil by applying high heat to the right amount of water, and then simmered over low heat until soft and fluffy—the millet grains on the bottom of the pot would burn while those in the middle would remain undercooked. As millet porridge was most common, the spoon became the most convenient tool because it helped one to eat the food elegantly.
Because grain food was, and is today, the most important part in a meal, the tool that transports it best also gains its primacy. Then what about chopsticks? As in the case of boiled millet porridge, boiling was the basic cooking method in Asia, and elsewhere. This incidentally is how Japanese miso soup is supposed to be eaten, though many outside Japan use a spoon today. As grain food was more important than non-grain food in a meal, chopsticks thus were a supplementary implement. By the 10th century, wheat succeeded in dethroning millet as the most consumed grain among the northern Chinese, followed also by the Koreans.
Wheat flour foods, such as noodles and dumplings, combined grain and non-grain foods in one form, and to eat noodles, chopsticks clearly were the better tool, for the spoon could not lift them. Chinese also customarily have used chopsticks to eat dumplings. Gold and silver chopsticks became popular in the Tang Dynasty to It was believed that silver chopsticks could detect poisons in food. Chopsticks can be classified into five groups based on the materials used to make them, i.
Bamboo and wood chopsticks are the most popular ones used in Chinese homes. There are a few things to avoid when using chopsticks. Chinese people usually don't beat their bowls while eating, since the behavior used to be practiced by beggars.
Don't insert chopsticks in a bowl upright because it is a custom exclusively used in sacrifice. If you are really interested in chopsticks, you may want to visit the Kuaizi Museum in Shanghai. The museum collected over 1, pairs of chopsticks. The oldest one was from the Tang Dynasty. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
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