Our Chinese tradition is to share meals. In most family or friend gatherings, there is a big table of food, and then we all eat together with our own chopsticks from the plate. If you're careful, you'll use communal chopsticks, but sometimes you'll forget to use your own chopsticks to eat the food. Only a very few families use separate utensils.

Split meals are when a table has separate meals and separate dishes, with each person having his or her own portion. In fact, meal sharing is a very hygienic thing to do. You know, our mouth, saliva inside with bacteria. And when you eat vegetables in a bowl, the saliva that the chopsticks bring out from your own mouth will be stained on top of the vegetables with the chopsticks. And these dishes are eaten by other people. Bacteria get into their bodies as well. And we eat other people's bacteria just the same. A lot of people who ask for separate meals do so because they can't stand this. Splitting meals is a way to avoid the spread of these things, and with everyone staying out of each other's way, they certainly can't spread.

And sharing meals is good for people who are picky eaters. You have to eat what's given to you. Instead of picking and choosing from a bowl, you set aside what you don't eat and eat what tastes good. It can make a lot of people correct this bad habit of theirs. And at family dinners, most of them are made by one person and eaten by several or even a dozen people. By the time the person who has finished cooking and cleaning up the kitchen comes to eat, there may not be any food left on the table. And at this time, if the meals are separated, their share is still there, and they can just eat it slowly.

While a joint meal is really lively, everyone pinches each other's food to persuade them to eat and it's also very atmospheric. You don't have to wash a lot of dishes after eating. It's really difficult to change this habit at once. But the benefits of sharing meals are obvious. Personally, I'm in favor of sharing meals. But even if we can't share meals, we should try to use communal chopsticks or spoons when we eat out.