Chopsticks as tableware and artwork
Chinese think that eating with chopsticks is good to our appearance and life enjoyment.
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Ask any European of whether they find eating with chopsticks convenient and the answer is certain to be negative. But chopsticks are so useful that you soon stop thinking about the drawbacks. For example, eating with chopsticks is good to our appearance and life enjoyment. When you eat slowly, your neurons have enough time to transmit the signals from your stomach to your brain and you eat exactly the amount of food you need without facing the risk of eating too much, which happens regularly in case you eat with a fork and a knife. What’s moreï¼like an old saying ‘when in Rome do as the Rome do.’ It is very interesting to try using chopsticks. But for many foreigners it takes them certain time to make it. How to use chopsticks in a right way?
How to use chopsticks
There are two important things to remember for effective use of chopsticks. One is that the two lower ends must be even, that is, one must not protrude over the other. The other condition is that the two chopsticks must be in the same plane.
Place the first (lower) chopstick in the base of the thumb and index finger and rest its lower end below on the ring finger as shown. This chopstick remains fixed.
Hold the other (upper) chopstick between the tips of the index and middle fingers, steady its upper half against the base of the index finger, and use the tips of the thumb to keep it in place.
To pick up food, move the upper chopstick with index and middle fingers.
With a little practice, you will be able to use chopsticks with ease.
Because of its importance in Chinese life and for the collecting purpose more and more Chinese appreciate artwork chopsticks. This kind of chopsticks is often made from jade, gold, bronze, brass, agate, coral, ivory and silver.
Among the shops selling chopsticks, the West Lake Tianzhu Bamboo chopstick is the most popular in Jiangzhe district.
The West Lake Tianzhu bamboo chopsticks are elaborately made from indocalamus of Hangzhou Tianzhu Mountain large-leaf variety, with colorful pyrograph. They can be classified in different ways: 9 cun (a unit of length, 1 cun equals to 13 decimeters), 9.5 cun, 10 cun and 10.5 cun by length; coarse, medium, slender by thickness; Buddha, landscape, flowers, West Lake scenery by pyrograph; silver, bead, lead, iron and bone by the material of the chopstick head. Now West Lake bamboo chopstick is almost a must-buy souvenir for pilgrims and tourists, especially among Buddhist countries in the Southeast Asia.
