Quirks Part III

I assumed that I would primarily be using chopsticks to eat with during my stay before I even arrived, but when I pictured chopsticks I thought of the wooden kind that come in a paper sleeve in bags of Chinese take-out back home. I didn't picture these:














Honestly, I'd never seen stainless steel chopsticks before (and I don't whether that makes me uncultured or just plain ignorant about East Asian eating utensils). As it turns out, they are much more difficult to eat with than the wooden variety. I think it has something to do with friction, but for whatever reason, these things make me look like a fool any time I'm eating anything remotely slippery. I've gotten much better with them since I arrived (practice makes perfect!), but I still have difficulty with certain dishes. Incidentally, we also have forks, knives and spoons at the apartment, but I like to use chopsticks whenever I can so that I can master my skills. My index and middle fingers on my right hand have gotten much stronger also, developing muscles I never knew existed.

Of course, I fully support the idea of stainless steel chopsticks because they are reusable, and therefore good for the environment. I don't know how prevalent their use is in other Asian countries (I welcome any and all comments from anyone who can tell me), but I do know that China has recently had a national debate over wooden vs. non-wooden chopsticks.

Also worthy of note is that some of my students, especially the younger ones, don't know how to use chopsticks yet. A few older Koreans have told me stories of how they learned how to use them. I makes me wonder what the learning curve is like for chopsticks as opposed to the trinity of fork-knife-spoon. Everyone seems to have developed a personalized method that works best for them (so much for the aforementioned paper chopstick sleeves and their attempts to promote homogeneity of chopstick usage with those clever three-frame cartoon instructions). Some of Koreans I've met have been impressed that I even remotely knew how to use chopsticks and are curious about where I learned, whereas others have been amused by my attempts to pick up a piece of mu (Korean radish).