To compare the advantages and disadvantages of Chinese food and Western food, the difficulty is like comparing Chinese culture with Western culture. If you don’t pay attention, you will fall into the mud of methodology.
If the “meal” is the purpose, then the tools used for eating are the means. Therefore, compared with their respective purposes, it is not as good as PK’s means. Although there is no “means and purpose”, the “logical logic” is always more concise and intuitive than the “formal logic”.
On the means of eating, the Chinese used chopsticks, and the Westerners made the knife and fork. This is the biggest difference between Chinese and Western food culture. Some Chinese believe that when other people are still eating by hand, our ancestors have invented chopsticks. Therefore, this is enough to prove that we are getting up and down from the tree earlier, and the enlightenment is earlier than the knife. Fork civilization.
This kind of insight is very much in line with Claude Levi-Strauss’ “property logic”, that is, “born/cooked” at the sensory level (or “hand/cutlery supplier“), Corresponding to the social level is “nature/culture”. However, if we temporarily consider the handle as a type of tableware, we may find that the different forms of tableware are often determined by the nature of the food.
stainless steel cutlery
For example, in addition to cutlery and chopsticks, powder and food, meat and grass are also a major difference between Chinese and Western food. However, if I make the inference that “powder food should be started, meat can be moved”, then chopsticks will not be the best tool for grain (rice), but the spoon in the knife and fork family will be more competent. The so-called “knife sweeps a large piece, guns tie a point.”
Some people think that chopsticks are more likely to picky and delicate fish than knife and fork, so chopsticks may be the product of eating fish culture. However, for ancient China, fish is a luxury food, because the political and economic center at that time was far from the ocean. Otherwise, Lu Zhuanggong and Confucius would not regard the squid as a gift, and Mencius would not be in the fish. Make a far-reaching choice between the paw and the paw.
Others believe that the appearance of chopsticks is to fish in the soup bowl. Anyway, I would rather believe that the discovery and use of tableware may be the result of an accident. Occasionally, chopsticks were created, chopsticks became habits, habits affected behavior, and the comparison between chopsticks and cutlery was actually over. In other words, they already had the characteristics of “not shifting by human will”. For example, the spaghetti that is derived from Chinese noodles by forks is said to be the standard way of eating pasta. Not only that, but it is enough to make the use of chopsticks to eat pasta is very abrupt.
In any case, a child who has learned to use chopsticks will naturally lay a solid foundation for learning Chinese calligraphy in the future. There is a textbook that writes a brush pen and writes in the pen method: “The two pieces of chopsticks are used together, and only one of the fingers is removed. It is the double hook method of the brush. The finger is not slammed, and the other one is in the middle of the tiger’s mouth. Oh, it’s the single hook method.”
However, there have been few texts in the past and the past. In the use of chopsticks, the vast majority of Chinese children are self-taught. Just as a few years later, these children taught themselves to make love, and parents are convinced of this. However, those foreigners who love to eat Chinese food and show their knowledge are different. They have received formal training. In some Chinese restaurants in the United States, the decomposition map of the correct use of chopsticks is printed on the recipe.
In turn, Chinese adults are also very concerned about the knife and fork, like to eat Western food, all are proud of the correct use of knife and fork; do not like the Western food, part of it is also the head of the knife and fork complex rules. However, when we look at the table in a foreign country, foreigners are not willing to abide by the set they have set. In comparison, we are more like their compatriots a century ago – possibly including our English.
Or: Compared with metal knives and forks, chopsticks that consume a lot of forest trees are obviously not environmentally friendly. In fact, the chopsticks that Roland Bart gave to the “mothers of the motherhood” have always been stable and introverted. However, this character still does not help it fall into a deep environmental crisis. The international community’s condemnation and prohibition of the ivory trade have made the ivory chopsticks, which are the best of Chinese chopsticks, a kind of human feeding tool forcibly deprived of animal predation tools, and dare not go to the world again. As for the more widely used disposable chopsticks, it is notorious because it seriously consumes forest resources.
However, in the eyes of Chinese people nearly a century ago, disposable chopsticks (known by the Japanese as “cutting”) are highly civilized and healthy signs. Zhou Fohai wrote in his memoir “Toward Collection” that he took a boat from Shanghai and went to Nagasaki to go ashore. He took the train at night and bought food in the car. He saw only one chopstick. One classmate said, ‘What about a chopstick? Good dinner? ‘I said smartly: ‘Break into two, can’t you eat?’ So all three people were broken. Everyone thought that Japanese chopsticks were so short, it was really inconvenient. Later, I saw a Japanese nearby to eat. Chopsticks, not broken, but separated, so the three looked at each other and laughed.”
For this pair of “civilized chopsticks”, Mr. Feng Zikai pushed even more vigorously: “Put the chopsticks out of the paper bag, but see that half of them have been split and half are connected, let the guests crack themselves. This wood is disinfected. Yes, and no one has used it, so it is very quick to use. It is not a pity to use it after it is discarded. I praise this chopstick and think it is the most progressive product in the world. Westerners use knife and fork, too bulky If you want to wash it, you can use it again. The Chinese use bamboo chopsticks, which are also washed and reused. It is very unsanitary, even if it is ivory chopsticks, it is not hygienic. Japanese disinfection and cutting, just like a toothpick, only once, really A big invention.”
These words are enough to make today’s environmentalists vomit blood, but the spiritual nature of nursing students has been long-lasting. The latter has proposed a solution to carry chopsticks with you. However, it is difficult to know how to do it: chopsticks have a certain length and are sharp, and without carrying a bag, “have a long object” It is inevitable that there are many inconveniences in hiding the outer pockets. At least, I suspect that its carriers will have difficulty entering the Shanghai World Expo.
The Japanese invented the folding chopsticks to help solve this problem. Why can’t the Chinese version of the Swiss Army Knife change a pair of chopsticks? Secondly, after the food is finished, how should the pair of greasy chopsticks be disposed of? Wipe, then paper towels are not forest resources?
If you follow the Western style and use metal chopsticks (don’t care what Koreans think about Smida), the products you make, even if they are not close to the knife and fork, should be more like the cold weapon in Chinese martial arts novels. pen”. More common in the legendary novels of the Tang Dynasty, this kind of incompetent little skill is mostly made of stainless steel. The usage is mainly based on points, thorns, dials, and picks. The functions of the hands are acupuncture points.
It is impossible for Chinese food to use “knife and fork” to “saw”, and it is difficult for chopsticks to change from metal to bamboo. Even if it is metal, there is a day of exhaustion. By then, we will carry only our own hands, which is probably the same way for the knife and fork and the chopsticks. Li Zhengdao, a physicist, said: “The use of chopsticks is the specific application of the principle of physics. It is the extension of human fingers.” In fact, is chopsticks more than the extension of the fingers? When an uninvited guest appears to be ready for dinner, He may be a person who may destroy the atmosphere of dinner, or maybe a mouth that may participate in the fight for food, but in Chinese cultural etiquette, he is only socially “extended” as a pair of “multiple pendulums”.
Give me a pair of chopsticks (one is OK), I can pick up a whole table.
