Who knows the traditional tableware chopsticks in China?

Fourthly, chopsticks originated in Fu Shuo.

Anyone who has used chopsticks, whether China or foreigners, admires the inventor of chopsticks. But who invented it? When was it created? No one can answer this question now. China is an ancient country, but we can't find a little information to record this great contribution to human civilization. I don't know if our ancestors lacked words at that time, or if all the books recording chopsticks were lost. In short, the only answer to this unsolved case is "no record in history". Of course, the study of chopsticks culture is not without any circumstantial evidence. The author collected three legends about the origin of chopsticks.

Folklore is a story created by working people and related to certain historical figures, historical events and social customs. Although legends are also stories, they are different from stories: stories can be fabricated at will, but legends are often the product of history and related to actual things, so they contain some historical facts and have certain historical characteristics. Therefore, the legend about the origin of chopsticks can find some reference for the traceability of chopsticks.

"God Birds Save Jiang Ziya", a legend of chopsticks spread in Sichuan and other places.

Jiang Ziya knows nothing but straight hook fishing, so he is very poor. And his wife can't live any longer, so she wants to kill him and marry someone else.

On this day, Jiang Ziya went fishing and returned empty-handed. His wife said, "You are hungry. I cooked meat for you. You can eat! " ! Jiang Ziya was really hungry, so he reached for the meat. Suddenly a bird flew out of the window and pecked him. He was in pain. He didn't eat meat, so he went to catch birds. When he went to get the meat for the second time, the bird pecked the back of his hand again. Jiang Ziya became suspicious. Why did this bird peck me twice? Can't I eat this meat? In order to try the bird, he caught the meat for the third time, and then the bird pecked him again. Knowing that it was a divine bird, he pretended to drive the bird away and chased it outside to an uninhabited hillside. He saw the bird perched on a silk bamboo and whispered, "Jiang Ziya, Jiang Ziya, don't grab the meat with your hands, it's under my feet ..." "Jiang Ziya listened to the bird's advice and took two thin bamboos home. At this time, his wife urged him to eat meat again, so Jiang Ziya put two thin silk bamboos into a bowl, and just threatened the meat, only the silk bamboos creaked into thick smoke. Pretending to know nothing about poisoning, Jiang Ziya said to his wife, "How can meat smoke? Is it poisonous? " There is no poison, you know that silk and bamboo can't touch meat. "It's not poisonous, so you can have one." Jiang Ziya picked up the meat and sent it to his wife's mouth. She turned pale with fear and hurried out of the door.

Jiang Ziya knew that this bamboo was a gift from God Bird, and any poison could be detected. Since then, he has eaten with two bamboo sticks every meal. After the news came out, not only did his wife dare not poison again, but the neighbors also learned to eat with bamboo sticks. Later, more and more people followed suit and the custom of eating with chopsticks was passed down from generation to generation.

This legend is obviously the product of worshipping Jiang Ziya, and it is also inconsistent with historical records. Because ivory chopsticks appeared in the Yin Dynasty, Jiang Ziya and Yin were contemporaries. Since Zhou Wang has been using ivory chopsticks, thin bamboo chopsticks in Jiang Ziya are far from being invented.

Da ji, a caged princess in Shang Zhouwang, fed Zhou Wang with a jade hairpin, which is a legend of chopsticks circulating in Jiangsu.

Shang Zhouwang is moody. When eating, he either said that the fish was not fresh, that the chicken soup was too hot, and sometimes he said that the food was cold and could not be eaten. Many chefs have become ghosts under his sword in order to eat. Favorite da ji also knows that she is difficult to serve, so every time she gives a banquet, she tastes it in advance, lest Zhou Wang get angry again. Once, I tasted a bowl of delicious food that was too hot, but it was too late to change it, because Zhou Wang had come to the table. In order to please Zhou Wang, da ji used his quick wits. He took off the long Hosta on his head, picked up the food, blew it and sent it to Zhou Wang's mouth. Zhou Wang is a dissolute and shameless person. He thought it was a pleasure to feed da ji with food, so he wanted da ji to do it every day. Later, da ji asked craftsmen to make two jade chopsticks for her to hold food, which was the initial prototype of jade chopsticks. Later, this way of carrying food spread to the people, so chopsticks came into being in China.

Different from the first legend, the legend of chopsticks is not full of myth, but close to life, which has certain practical significance, but even the legend is still inconsistent with the facts. Because the bronze chopsticks excavated by archaeologists in the Yin Tomb at Houjiazhuang 1005 in Anyang predate the era of Zhou Wang at the end of Yin Dynasty, it is obvious that chopsticks were not invented by Zhou Wang or my sister, but should be an earlier product.

"Dayu fished out hot food in the pot with branches and thin bamboo poles" is a legend of chopsticks circulating in Northeast China.

In the Yao-Shun era, floods caused disasters, and Shun ordered Yu to control water. After Dayu was ordered, he vowed to clear the flood for the people, so he searched his house three times and didn't go in. He struggled with fierce water waves day and night, not to mention resting, and even eating and sleeping, he could not bear to delay a minute.

Once, Dayu came to an island by boat. He was hungry, so he set up a clay pot cook the meat. After the meat is cooked, he can't grasp the food with his hands because it is too hot. Dayu didn't want to wait for the meat pot to get cold and waste time, so he cut off two branches and took the meat out of the soup to eat. From then on, in order to save time, Dayu always fished food from the boiling pot with branches and thin bamboo poles to make time for emergency affairs. Over time, Dayu skillfully learned the skill of holding food with a thin stick. People under his command saw him eat vegetables like this, neither spicy nor greasy, and followed suit, thus gradually forming the prototype of chopsticks.

Although legends mainly express people's understanding, views and feelings about historical events through some historical materials, they do not strictly reproduce the historical events themselves. But people today believe that it is true after hearing the initial process of Dayu's misuse of chopsticks in water control. Compared with the legend of making chopsticks in Jiang Ziya and da ji, it is more simple and true, and it also conforms to the law of the development of things.

The most important opportunity to promote the birth of chopsticks is that cooked food is hot. In ancient times, because there were no metal utensils, and because animal bones were too short and brittle to be processed easily, our ancestors picked bamboo and branches to catch cooked food. In the wilderness, human beings live in dense forests and grass holes, and the most convenient materials are trees and bamboo poles. Because of this, the ancestors fiddled with sticks and thin bamboo when baking, scooped them up when eating hot food, and stirred them when cooking corn and millet, only then did the embryonic form of chopsticks gradually appear. This is an inevitable development law under the special environment of human beings. From the present modeling research of chopsticks, it still has the characteristics of primitive bamboo sticks, and even after three years of development, its primitiveness cannot be changed.

Of course, any legend has always been processed through the selection, tailoring, fiction, exaggeration, rendering and even fantasy art of past generations.

The legend that Dayu created chopsticks is no exception. This paper focuses on Dayu, a typical figure, who has gradually explored the manufacturing technology of chopsticks for thousands of years. In fact, the birth of chopsticks should be the collective wisdom of ancestors, not the credit of one person. However, chopsticks may have originated in the Dayu era. After hundreds of years or even years of exploration and popularization, chopsticks became tableware used with spoons in the Shang Dynasty.

So when did China start eating with chopsticks at the same time? There is no clear literature on this question now, so we can only find the answer from circumstantial evidence. To eat with chopsticks, you must have a lighter and smaller bowl, but in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the utensils were huge and it was difficult to hold them in one hand and the other. Even the relatively small "beans" are mainly meat, with a cover and high feet, which can't be carried in the hand. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, a small round bowl with round feet appeared. Judging from the bowls and plates of Western Han tombs in Luoyang, Danyang and Tunxi, many of them are glazed pottery with light weight and bright color. Obviously, this kind of bowl can be used with chopsticks to eat, and from the full set of lacquer ear cups and bamboo chopsticks unearthed from Mawangdui tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province in the early Western Han Dynasty, it can be affirmed that chopsticks and chopsticks were the only way to unify the whole country at that time.

Some folklorists analyze it from the perspective of archaeology. In the tombs of the late Warring States period, there were few ritual vessels that turned around. People in the pre-Qin dynasty washed their hands with plates and boxes before eating. With the evolution of the times, the ancestors knew that washing hands was no longer a necessary etiquette for eating after using chopsticks instead of grabbing food, so the use of plates and rotation during burial was also decreasing. The disappearance of washbasin with funerary objects can also be used as circumstantial evidence, which shows that washbasin has become the main tableware for China people to eat at the end of the Warring States Period or after Qin Shihuang unified China.

Let's infer from the law of development of things. When people hold food in their left hand and food in their right hand, they should do this for three meals a day. Will anyone find it inconvenient to eat like this? When you wash your hands before meals and your hands are sticky after meals, will someone suddenly find that pods not only have the function of carrying vegetables, but also have the function of receiving meals when you are bored? Nothing can be fixed, and the etiquette system will be broken by brave people. When people discover the disadvantages of grasping food with their hands and the advantages and multifunction of chopsticks, they reform the old custom of eating in a rut, which is completely the inevitable law of human progress. From grabbing food by hand to eating with chopsticks, there will be obstacles and even attacks from conservative etiquette. Coupled with the habit of using chopsticks instead of grabbing rice, the progress of this reform is very slow, and it will never happen overnight. But the superiority and universality of chopsticks exist objectively. When our ancestors gradually discovered that chopsticks can not only be clamped, but also be plucked, picked, roasted, pinched, peeled, poked and torn, except for scouring soup, everyone happily played a leading role at the dinner table. With the development of history and the continuous enrichment of cooking skills, because of the main role of chopsticks, cold dishes, noodles, Shanxi fish, mutton hot pot, shredded apples and other foods suitable for chopsticks have also emerged. The change from grasping rice with hands to eating with chopsticks can be said to be the earliest chopsticks and chopsticks revolution in China's food culture.

Eating with chopsticks is a custom handed down from ancient times in China. In ancient times, chopsticks were called "chopsticks". In the traditional etiquette culture of China, the use of the following kinds of chopsticks is quite taboo.

Three long and two short: chopsticks are irregularly placed on the table before or during meals. Usually we call it "three long and two short", which means "death", which is very unlucky. People in China used to think that people should be put in coffins after death. When people put them in the coffin, the coffin is composed of two short boards and three long boards, which together are just "three long boards and two short boards".

Fairy shows the way: this method of holding chopsticks is to hold chopsticks with thumb, middle finger, ring finger and little finger, and the index finger is extended to show criticism. Pointing at people while eating chopsticks is tantamount to accusing others, just like swearing.

Taste: Putting one end of chopsticks in your mouth, slurping back and forth with your mouth, and making a hissing sound from time to time, this behavior is considered inferior. Eating chopsticks with your mouth is a rude behavior in itself. Coupled with the sound, it is boring and will be considered as the lack of family education.

Knock on the cup: This behavior is regarded as begging by beggars, and its practice is to knock on plates and bowls with chopsticks while eating. In the past, only beggars hit the begging bowl with chopsticks, and the sound was accompanied by the cry in their mouths, which attracted the attention of pedestrians and gave alms.

Patrol the city with chopsticks: This practice is to hold chopsticks in your hand, pretend that there is no one watching, and look for them in the dishes on the table. I don't know where to buy it. This kind of behavior is a typical lack of self-cultivation, and arrogance is extremely disgusting.

Dig a grave with chopsticks: this means that you can't stop pulling chopsticks out of vegetables to find prey, just like robbing a grave to dig a grave. This practice is similar to "touring the city", which is both uneducated and boring.

Tears: When you use chopsticks to hold the dishes on the plate, your hands are clumsy, and the soup will flow to other dishes or the table. This practice is considered to be a serious faux pas, and it is also undesirable.

Daogankun: It is looked down upon to use chopsticks upside down while eating. As the saying goes, you are too hungry to care about your face.

Fixed sea needle: it is considered a shame for diners at the same table to hold the dishes on the plate with chopsticks when eating. Making such a move while eating is tantamount to pointing the middle finger at people in public in Europe.

Incense in public: It is considered disrespectful to put a pair of chopsticks in other people's food for convenience and convenience when helping others with food out of kindness. Because the tradition in China is to burn incense for the dead.

Cross: This is often overlooked. It is wrong to cross chopsticks casually on the table when eating. People in China think that putting a cross on the dining table is a total denial of others at the same table. In addition, this practice is also disrespectful to yourself, because in the past, you only crossed the line when you went to court to draw a confession.