Use and Symbolism of Chinese chopsticks

In ancient times, the Chinese were far ahead of the rest of the world. They are credited with many important inventions like, paper and paper money, the umbrella, eye glasses, fireworks, woodblock printing, the magnetic compass, and some foods like noodles, rice, tea, and even ice cream. They invented chopsticks in the 11th century BC to eat their food with instead of having to use their hands. Some believe that they even invented the fork but they used the chopsticks instead because Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, considered the knife and fork to be violent weapons and chopsticks reflected gentleness.

Chinese chopsticks are usually made from wood, bamboo, or plastic. Children usually begin using chopsticks at the age of 5, before that, they use a spoon. The word for chopsticks in the Chinese language is Kuai zzz and these are the characters used to write the word chopsticks in the Chinese alphabet. Most Chinese food is cut up into small bite size pieces before it is cooked, so they can be easily eaten with chopsticks.

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But before you try to use chopsticks to eat some food, you need to know the polite ways to use them.

* Never use the chopsticks to play the drums on the table or as a sword to fight your friends

* Never point at someone with the chopsticks

* Don’t stab or spear your food with your chopstick

* Do not put elbows on the table when using chopsticks

* But most of all, don’t stick your chopsticks in your food standing straight up.

In Chinese culture, that is a symbol for death. Some Chinese people believe that if you drop your chopsticks, you will have bad luck or if your chopsticks are not the same length, you will miss your boat, plane, train, or car trip.

But these are just superstitions. Now I want everyone to try to use some chopsticks. Let’s practice first and then we will play a game. Here are directions on how to use chopsticks. Try to relax your hand and if the chopsticks are not even, tap them on the table. If you can…try to keep the bottom chopstick still and only move the top chopstick. Chopsticks Game Divide into 3 groups. Each member in each group will see how many pieces of cereal that they can get into the bowl, using the chopsticks correctly, after 1 minute.

Record the results. Now the person from your group that has the most cereal in the bowl at the end of the minute will compete against the winner from the other 2 groups to see who the ultimate winner is. In a real classroom I would have the 3 groups rotate to 3 stations with 3 different types of foods so they can experiment with different textures and sizes of foods to try and pick up with the chopsticks.