Chopsticks are available in China, Korea and Japan. What are their uses?

East Asian cultural circles, including China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan, are all centered on China. The food cultures of these three countries also have great similarities. All three countries use chopsticks. Of course, chopsticks in China spread to other places. However, China, Japanese and Korean chopsticks are quite different.

China is the originator of chopsticks. According to legend, Dayu was the first person to use chopsticks in the world. As a symbol of a civilization and an era, Dayu is more like a symbol of an era. The correct statement should be that "people in Dayu era used chopsticks first".

From ancient chopsticks to modern chopsticks, chopsticks have experienced a long evolution history of 3000 years. Chopsticks have been handed down to this day, and Chinese people have paid a lot of attention to them. People in China are very particular about using chopsticks, including etiquette and taboos. The chopsticks used by China are long and straight, and both ends are blunt, which probably reflects that the Han people are generally not aggressive.

Japan is also a big country of chopsticks. Studying Japanese chopstick culture, we are quite gratified that when young people in China no longer know what "chopsticks" are, it was the Japanese who guarded this tradition of chopsticks culture for us. However, when chopsticks arrived in Japan, they were gradually different from China in use. First of all, it is shorter than China chopsticks in shape, and most of them are round.

Japanese chopsticks are shorter than those in China, from thick to thin, and finally become sharp. This is also very similar to the characteristics of the Yamato nation. They are very aggressive. Secondly, there are many etiquette about chopsticks, because Japanese culture attaches great importance to rules, order and etiquette. Thirdly, wooden chopsticks are the main chopsticks used by the Japanese, and sanitary chopsticks are also used. But unlike China, the Japanese don't use their own trees to make disposable chopsticks. They all import wood from other countries, such as Southeast Asia and China.

Our other neighbors, North Korea and South Korea, are also big users of chopsticks. But chopsticks on the Korean peninsula are mostly made of metal. On the peninsula, kings, ministers and rich people used gold and silver chopsticks in the past, while ordinary people could only use iron chopsticks. Today, beautiful stainless steel chopsticks are the mainstream.

Some scholars in Japan have analyzed that the reason why Japanese people love disposable sanitary chopsticks is because there is a "one-session" emotion in Japanese bones that stems from the experience of "drinking tea". People in China like to use long chopsticks that have been cleaned and reused, which shows endurance, perseverance and strong adhesion that never despair. As for the extensive use of metal chopsticks on the Korean peninsula, it reflects the rigidity and tragic complex of the peninsula between the mainland and the island countries.