Chopsticks have many names. In the pre-Qin period, they were called "毐" and "pod". Zheng Xuan's comment: "抯" is also like chopsticks, and today people call chopsticks "箸Ti". When Ma Qian, a famous historian in the Han Dynasty, wrote "Historical Records", he called the chopsticks of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties "箸", which was written as "wooden chopsticks" in ancient times. . The word "jin" appeared again in the Han Dynasty. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Li Bai's poem "Traveling is Difficult" said: "You can't eat when you stop drinking and throwing tendons." Du Fu's poem "Beauty's Journey" said: "The rhinoceros chopsticks are tired of drinking for a long time, and the rhinoceros knife is cutting the empty space." From the two great poets, In the poem, we know that "jin" and "箸" were used interchangeably in the Tang Dynasty. However, since the Tang Dynasty, the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties have all collectively called "箸".
The Origin of Chopsticks King Zhou was the first king to use ivory chopsticks
Our country is the birthplace of chopsticks and has a long history of eating with chopsticks. The ancient book "Han Feizi Yu Lao" records: "In the past, Zhou was an elephant chopstick, and Jizi was afraid." Sima Qian also said in "Historical Records: Zongweizi Family" that "Zhou was an elephant chopstick, and Jizi sighed: "That is an elephant chopstick. It must be a jade cup; if it is a jade cup, it must be thought of the rare and strange things in the distance. From now on, the palace of Yuma will be unstoppable." Although this is a statement about King Zhou's luxurious life and aroused the fear of the courtiers. The court events caused by ivory chopsticks provide us with the most valuable written historical data for tracing the birth and development of chopsticks. Zhou was the monarch of the last Shang Dynasty. According to this calculation, my country had around 1144 BC, which means that refined ivory chopsticks appeared in my country more than 3,100 years ago.
There are also people who doubt the record in the ancient book "Zhou is an elephant chopstick". They think that there are no elephants in Henan, Hebei and other places. How can there be ivory chopsticks? According to archaeologists, the oracle bone inscriptions unearthed in the Shang Dynasty have "elephant". ", there are also records of "Fu Xiang" and "Lai Xiang". There is also a sentence in "Lu Shi Chun Qiu Ancient Music" that "businessmen serve Xiang". According to "Original Flavor Chapter": "The promise of Jingxiang" means that elephant trunk is also a kind of delicacy. From this we can see that there were swarms of wild elephants in the Shang Dynasty. It is precisely because elephants were hunted in the Shang Dynasty that it was possible for "Zhou to become an elephant chopstick". Dayu is the legendary first person to use chopsticks in China
There is a folk legend in Northeast my country. It is said that Dayu passed through the house three times without entering when he was dealing with floods. He always ate in the outdoors. Sometimes time was tight, waiting for animals. As soon as the meat boils in the pot, I am eager to eat, and then I set off on my way. But the soup was boiling and couldn't be eaten, so he broke off branches and stuffed it with meat or rice flour. This was the first prototype of chopsticks. Although the legend is not official history, chopsticks were born due to luck because cooked food was hot to the touch. This is in line with the laws of human life development.
Zheng Zhu in "Book of Rites" says, "Cover living things with soil and then eat them with cannons." This is to wrap millet in leaves, paste it in mud and roast it in the fire. Some experts believe that this grilling method also promoted the formation of chopsticks. When the ancestors roasted the grains coated with mud in the ashes of the fire, they constantly stirred them with branches in order to make them ripen evenly. Our wise ancestors were inspired by the process of stirring primitive popcorn. Over time, The prototype of chopsticks also gradually appeared in the hands of ancestors.
This is of course speculation, because there was no writing at the end of the Neolithic Age until the time of Xia and Yu, and the invention of chopsticks could not be recorded at that time. However, these speculations by dietary experts are not without scientific reason.
"Han Feizi Yu Lao" calls chopsticks "箸", which once again proves that chopsticks were originally made of wood and bamboo. Because there are many trees in the north and bamboo in the south, our ancestors used local materials. Therefore, bamboo is the most primitive raw material for chopsticks in our country.
Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" of the Han Dynasty said: "The sound of chopsticks is made from bamboo." Tree poles or bamboo are used as tools for carrying food. However, it is a long time of hundreds of years or even longer to use branches and thin bamboos to scoop hot food from clay pots to the formation of chopsticks.
The history of mankind is a history of evolution. As food and cooking methods improve, their eating utensils also continue to develop. In primitive society, everyone ate with their hands. In the Neolithic Age, most of our ancestors used the steaming method to eat. The staple food rice and beans were boiled into porridge, and the non-staple food vegetables and meat were cooked into juicy soup. It is very inconvenient to pick up vegetables and meat with a spoon, but it is very convenient to use chopsticks to pick up vegetables and leaves. Therefore, "Book of Rites·Quli" says, "If there are vegetables in the soup, use it, and if there are no vegetables, you don't need to use it." Note by Zheng Xuan "Kai, like chopsticks." It can be seen from this that in the Neolithic Age, soup was a secondary mainstream. It was extremely inconvenient to use a spoon for eating soup. It was even more impossible to grasp the hot and thin soup with hands, so chopsticks became the most ideal tableware.
In short, the appearance of chopsticks is not isolated. As far back as the middle of the Neolithic Age, daggers and keys have been discovered in the Yangshao Cultural Site. When history advanced to the late Neolithic Age, human wisdom had developed to a certain extent and living conditions had improved. Eating with daggers and spoons alone could no longer adapt to the evolution of cooking, so chopsticks followed the trend and appeared. However, in the Xia Dynasty four thousand years ago, chopsticks were still in their infancy. After hundreds of years of continuous evolution, by the Shang and Tang Dynasties, they gradually formed two small sticks of the same length, longer than the tiger's mouth. Then it developed to the end of the Shang Dynasty. In order to satisfy the luxurious and noble life needs of his king, Zhou ordered the hunting of elephants to saw their teeth and make elephant chopsticks.
Since there is no record of the birth of the chopsticks, we can only trace the birth of the chopsticks based on various inferences and circumstantial evidence from some experts. However, we believe that the emergence of the chopsticks is the inevitable result of historical deduction.
The invention of chopsticks is related to the form of food
Our ancestors invented chopsticks and they were related to food.
The Chinese nation began an agricultural lifestyle very early, and the main crop is millet (millet) with strong adaptability. Millet grains have two major characteristics: first, the particles are small, and second, the rough outer skin is difficult to remove. In the early days, our ancestors may have mashed grains (millet) and cooked porridge for consumption, often mixed with some wild vegetables, leaves, etc. to improve the taste and save food. According to some research, the original meaning of the word "tea" is porridge-like food mixed with wild vegetables and leaves. There is still a food called "oil tea" in the northwest region. Flour is fried in mutton fat, then mixed with some sweet almonds and the like, and washed with hot water before eating. Here, the "tea" in the word "oil tea" is used in its most original meaning. Cantonese people still call eating breakfast "eating morning tea". In fact, they also use "tea" which is closer to the original meaning. In the Hunan accent, the word "chi" is pronounced as "cha", which is very close to the pronunciation of the word "tea". In some areas of North China, "cooking corn porridge" is called "wiping sticky porridge". Similarly, "wiping" has the same pronunciation as "tea". These phenomena all show that "tea" was originally a kind of food. Tea is more troublesome to eat. The wild vegetables and leaves in it will hinder the flow of tea, making it difficult to drink the tea into your mouth. This is the key to the invention of chopsticks by our ancestors.
Westerners were nomadic people at first. Their food was roasted and cooked meat, which could be cut into small pieces and eaten in their hands. The main food of Indians is rice, which is easy to shell, can be steamed and cooked into balls, and can also be eaten by grabbing it with hands. The daily food of our ancestors is tea, which is a thick, semi-liquid food that cannot be eaten by grabbing it with your hands, nor can it affect the wild vegetables and leaves in it. There may have been a smart ancient person who took a small stick or something and tried to push wild vegetables or leaves into his mouth. This was the original form of chopsticks. The earliest name for chopsticks is "箸", and the traditional Chinese version of the word "箸" is "箯". From the pronunciation and glyphs, we can see that the original function of chopsticks is to help with eating, and is not an essential dining tool. But at that time, small wooden sticks and the like could not be called chopsticks. The main reason why chopsticks are called chopsticks is that people must have the skills to use chopsticks, and the skill of using chopsticks requires hard practice to master. After our ancestors discovered the method of using small wooden sticks to pull the leaves of wild vegetables in tea, they would imitate them one after another, and finally fixed the number of small wooden sticks to two. Practice makes perfect, and the ancient people became more and more skilled in using small wooden sticks, until they made two small wooden sticks fly up and down, as skillfully as their own ten fingers, and chopsticks were born. Here, I define chopsticks as two small wooden sticks and their usage skills, both of which are indispensable.