The origin of chopsticks comes from folk legend. Anyone who has used chopsticks, whether Chinese or foreigners, will admire the inventor of chopsticks. But who invented it? When was it created? No one can answer this question now. Although China is a majestic ancient country, no data can be found to record this great contribution to human civilization. I wonder if our ancestors lacked writing at that time, or maybe the books recording chopsticks have been lost? In short, the only answer to this unsolved question is "History" "No record" four words. Of course, when studying the culture of chopsticks, it is not impossible to find no circumstantial evidence. The author has 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 made up as you like, but legends are often historical and related to actual things, so they contain certain historical factors and have a certain historical nature. Features. Therefore, the legend about the origin of chopsticks can provide some reference for tracing the origin of chopsticks. "The Divine Bird Saves Jiang Ziya", a chopstick legend spread in Sichuan and other places. Jiang Ziya only knows how to fish with a straight hook and cannot do anything else, so he is very poor. And his wife really couldn't live with him and wanted to marry him to someone else. Jiang Ziya came home empty-handed from fishing that day. His wife said, "You are hungry. I have cooked meat for you. You can eat it!" Jiang Ziya was indeed hungry, so he reached out to grab the meat, and suddenly a bird flew outside the window. , pecked him, and he made a sound of pain. The meat was not finished, so he hurriedly chased the bird away. When he went to get the meat a second time, the bird pecked the back of his hand. Jiang Ziya was suspicious, why did the bird peck me twice? Could it be that I couldn't eat the meat? In order to test the bird, he went to catch the meat for the third time, and then the bird came to peck him again. He knew it was a magical bird, so he pretended to chase it away and chased it until he reached an uninhabited hillside. He saw the magical bird perched on a branch of bamboo and murmured: "Jiang Ziya, Jiang Ziya, eat it." You can't grab the meat with your hands. The meat is under my feet..." Jiang Ziya listened to the instructions of the divine bird and hurriedly picked two thin bamboos and returned home. At this time, his wife urged him to eat meat again, so Jiang Ziya put two thin bamboo strips into the bowl. Just as he was about to hold the meat, he saw streams of green smoke rising from the thin bamboo strips. Jiang Ziya pretended not to know about the poisoning and said to his wife: "Why does the meat smoke? Is it poisonous?" It's not poisonous. You know that silk and bamboo cannot touch meat. "It's really not poisonous, then you eat a piece." After saying this, Jiang Ziya picked up the meat and put it into his wife's mouth. Her face turned pale with fright and she hurriedly ran out the door. Jiang Ziya understood that this silk bamboo was a sacred bamboo sent by a divine bird, and any poison could be detected. From then on, he used two silk bamboos for every meal. After the news came out, his wife not only did not dare to poison her again, but her neighbors also learned to eat with bamboo branches. 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 worshiping Jiang Ziya, and it is inconsistent with historical records. Because ivory chopsticks had already appeared in the Yin Dynasty, and Jiang Ziya and King Zhou of Yin were the same generation. Since King Zhou was already using ivory chopsticks, then Jiang Ziya’s silk chopsticks were very thin. Bamboo chopsticks are no invention at all. Daji, the concubine of King Zhou of Shang Dynasty, used a jade hairpin to feed vegetables to King Zhou. This is a chopstick popular in Jiangsu. Legend has it that King Zhou of Shang Dynasty was moody. When eating, he would either say that the fish was not fresh or that the chicken soup was too hot. Sometimes he would say that the dishes were too cold to eat. Many chefs have become victims of him for eating. The beloved concubine Daji also knew that he was difficult to serve, so every time he served a banquet, she would taste it in advance to avoid King Zhou's anger again. Once, my sister tasted that a bowl of delicious food was too hot, but it was too late to replace it because King Zhou had already arrived at the dinner table. In order to please King Zhou, Daji quickly took off the long jade hairpin on her head, picked up the vegetables, blew on them, and then sent them to King Zhou's mouth. King Zhou was a dissolute and shameless person. He thought it was a pleasure for Daji to carry vegetables and feed her, so he wanted Daji to do this every day. Later, Daji asked craftsmen to make two jade chopsticks specially for her to hold vegetables. This was the prototype of jade chopsticks. Later, this method of holding vegetables was spread to the people, and chopsticks were born in China. This chopstick legend is not as mythical as the first legend, but is closer to life and has some practical significance. However, even if it is legendary, it is still inconsistent with the facts. Because the copper chopsticks excavated by archaeologists at Yin Tomb No. 1005 in Houjiazhuang, Anyang, have been proven to be earlier than the King Zhou era at the end of the Yin Dynasty, so it is obvious that chopsticks were neither invented by King Zhou nor by my sister, and should have been earlier. product. "Yu used branches and thin bamboos to scoop up hot food from the pot" is a chopstick legend spread in the Northeast. In the era of Yao and Shun, floods were widespread, and Shun ordered Yu to control the floods. After Dayu was ordered to do so, he vowed to clear the floods for the people, so he passed through his house three times without entering. He fought against the fierce water and waves day and night, not to mention resting, even eating and sleeping, and was reluctant to lose a minute or a second. One time, Dayu went to an island by boat. He was unbearably hungry, so he set up a clay pot to cook meat. After the meat was boiled, it was too hot to eat with his hands. Dayu didn't want to waste time waiting for the meat pot to cool down, so he chopped it into pieces. He used two branches to lift the meat out of the soup and ate it. From then on, in order to save time, Dayu always used branches and thin bamboos to fish food from the boiling pot to free up time to deal with urgent matters. Over time, Dayu developed the ability to use thin sticks to hold food skillfully. When his subordinates saw that he was eating food in this way, it neither burned their hands nor made their hands greasy, so they also followed suit. In this way, chopsticks were gradually formed. prototype.

Although legends mainly use certain historical materials to express the people's understanding, opinions and feelings about historical events, rather than strictly reproducing the historical events themselves. However, after hearing about the initial process of Yu Dayu accidentally using chopsticks in water control, people today believe that it is a real situation. It is more simple and authentic than the legend of Jiang Ziya and Daji making chopsticks, and it is also in line with the law of development of things. The main reason for the birth of chopsticks should be that cooked food was hot to the touch. In ancient times, because there were no metal utensils, and because animal bones were too short and extremely brittle, it was difficult to process, so the ancestors picked thin bamboos and branches to get cooked food. In a wilderness environment, humans live in caves in dense forests and bushes, and the most convenient materials are trees and bamboo poles. Because of this, the prototype of chopsticks gradually emerged through the manipulation of small sticks and thin bamboos by the ancestors when they were roasting food, scooping them up when they were in a hurry to get hot food, and stirring them when cooking millet. This is an inevitable development law under the special environment of human beings. Judging from the current shape of chopsticks, it still has the characteristics of primitive bamboo sticks. Even after more than three thousand years of development, its originality cannot be changed. Of course, any legend is always made through the selection, tailoring, fiction, exaggeration, exaggeration and even fantasy art of people of all ages. The legend of Dayu's creation of chopsticks is no exception. It is the process of people gradually exploring the process of making chopsticks for thousands of years. Focus on the typical figure of Dayu. In fact, the birth of chopsticks should be the collective wisdom of the ancestors, not the credit of any one person. However, chopsticks may have originated in the time of Dayu. After hundreds or even thousands of years of exploration and popularization, they became tableware used together with spoons in the Shang Dynasty. So when did the use of chopsticks to eat food and eat at the same time appear in our country? There is no clear literature on this question. The answer can only be found from circumstantial evidence. To eat with chopsticks, you must have a lighter and smaller bowl, but The food utensils of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties were relatively bulky and difficult to hold with one hand and hold chopsticks with the other hand. Even the smaller "dou" is mainly used to hold meat, has a lid and high feet, and cannot be held in the hand. It was not until the early Western Han Dynasty that small round bowls with round feet and flat bottoms appeared. Judging from the Western Han Dynasty tomb bowls and plates from Luoyang, Danyang and Tunxi, many of them are glazed pottery, which are light in weight and bright in color. This kind of bowl can obviously be used with chopsticks for eating. And judging from the set of lacquered ear cups and bamboo chopsticks unearthed from the early Western Han Dynasty tombs in Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan, we can be sure that eating with chopsticks dominated the world at that time. Some folklore scholars have analyzed from an archaeological perspective and found that few ritual vessels such as plates and zas have been found in tombs in the late Warring States Period. People in the pre-Qin period used their hands to eat, so they had to use plates and boxes to wash their hands before eating. With the evolution of the times, after the ancestors learned to use chopsticks instead of hands to grab food, washing hands was no longer a necessary etiquette for eating, so the number of burial dishes gradually decreased. The disappearance of wash basins and boxes in burials also provides circumstantial evidence that chopsticks have become the main tableware for Chinese people to eat vegetables and rice in the late Warring States period or after Qin Shihuang unified China. Let us further deduce based on the laws of development of things. When people take food with their left hand and hold chopsticks with their right hand, they have to do this for three meals a day. Will anyone find it troublesome and inconvenient to eat like this? When people have to wash their hands before eating. After eating, when you have to wash your sticky hands after eating, will someone suddenly realize that the chopsticks not only have the function of holding the vegetables, but also have the function of picking up the food? Nothing is possible. It is static and unchanging, and there will be brave people who can break through the etiquette system. When people discovered the disadvantages of eating with their hands and discovered the advantages and multi-functionality of chopsticks, they reformed the old eating customs. This is completely an inevitable law of human progress. Changing from grabbing rice with hands to eating vegetables with chopsticks will inevitably encounter obstruction and even attacks from the conservatives of etiquette. In addition, changing chopsticks to replace grabbing rice also has habit problems, so the progress of this reform is very slow and will definitely It won't work overnight. But the superiority and multifunctionality of chopsticks exist objectively. When our ancestors gradually discovered that chopsticks can not only pinch, but also pick, pick, pick, pinch, peel, poke, tear, etc., everyone was delighted to use chopsticks to play a world-dominating role at the dinner table besides making soup. With the development of history, cooking skills have been continuously enriched. Due to the existence of chopsticks as a main role, dishes suitable for chopsticks have also emerged, such as cold dishes, noodles, Shanxi poached fish, hotpot mutton, and shredded apples. Changing from eating with hands to eating with chopsticks can be said to be the earliest chopstick revolution in Chinese food culture. The use of chopsticks for eating by Chinese people is a custom handed down from ancient times. In ancient times, chopsticks were called "箸". In traditional Chinese etiquette culture, the following uses of chopsticks are quite taboo. Three long and two short: This means placing chopsticks of uneven lengths on the table before or during the meal. Usually we call it "three long and two short", which means "death" and is very unlucky. The Chinese used to believe that a person must be put into a coffin after death. Before the lid of the coffin was closed, the coffin was composed of two short wooden boards and three long wooden boards. Together, they were exactly "three long and two short." Immortal Guidance: This way of holding chopsticks is to hold the chopsticks with your thumb, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger, and extend your index finger, which has the meaning of accusation. Pointing at others when eating and holding chopsticks is tantamount to blaming others, which is the same as swearing. Tasting chopsticks and leaving a sound: Holding one end of the chopsticks in your mouth, sucking it back and forth with your mouth, and making a hissing sound from time to time. This behavior is considered a despicable practice. Sucking chopsticks with your mouth while eating is a rude behavior in itself, coupled with the sound, it is annoying and will be considered as a lack of tutoring. Knocking on the cup: This behavior is regarded as a beggar asking for food. It is done by tapping the plate and bowl with chopsticks while eating.

In the past, only beggars would hit the begging bowl with chopsticks. The sound made by the beggar, combined with the cry from the mouth, would attract the attention of passers-by and give them alms. Patrolling the city with chopsticks: In this way, you hold chopsticks in your hand, as if no one else is watching, and use the chopsticks to search among the dishes on the table. You don’t know where to take off the chopsticks. This kind of behavior is a typical sign of lack of self-cultivation, and is extremely arrogant and disgusting. Digging with chopsticks: This refers to holding chopsticks in the hand and digging around in the dish to find prey, just like robbing a grave and digging for a grave. This approach is similar to "touring the city with chopsticks", which are both uneducated and annoying. Tearing chopsticks and leftover beads: When using chopsticks to pick up vegetables on one's plate, one's hands are not smooth, causing the vegetable soup to flow into other dishes or onto the table. This practice is considered a serious disrespect and is also undesirable. Turning things upside down: Using chopsticks upside down during meals is looked down upon. As the saying goes, hungry people don't choose food, so much so that they don't care about face. Dinghai Shenzhen: Using a chopstick to insert food on the plate during a meal is considered a humiliation to the diners at the same table. Doing this while eating is equivalent to giving someone the middle finger in public in Europe. Offering incense in public: When you serve someone else's rice out of good intentions, it will be considered disrespectful to insert a pair of chopsticks into the rice and hand it to them just to save trouble. Because the Chinese tradition is to do this when offering incense to the dead. Crossed: This point is often not noticed by people. It is wrong to cross the chopsticks casually on the table during meals. Chinese people believe that putting a cross on the dinner table is a complete rejection of other people at the same table. In addition, this approach is also disrespectful to oneself, because in the past, the cross was only made when facing a lawsuit.