Chinese 'must swap chopsticks for knife and fork' - It is a battle that has divided East and West for centuries: Are chopsticks superior to the knife and fork? Now the debate may finally be decided, on environmental grounds.

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Chinese 'must swap chopsticks for knife and fork'

It is a battle that has divided East and West for
centuries: Are chopsticks superior to the knife and fork?
Now the debate may finally be decided, on environmental
grounds.

Used chopsticks are discarded in a rubbish bin at a
restaurant in Beijing�Photo: AP

By Malcolm Moore, Beijing
The Telegraph
telegraph.co.uk
Wednesday, March 13, 2013

With 1.4 billion people ploughing through 80 billion
pairs of throwaway chopsticks each year, China has
admitted its forests can no longer provide enough cutlery
for its dinner tables.

"We must change our consumption habits and encourage
people to carry their own tableware," said Bo Guangxin,
the chairman of Jilin Forestry Industry Group, to his
fellow delegates at the National People's Congress.

Pointing out that only 4,000 chopsticks can be carved
from a 20-year-old tree, he even went so far as to
suggest that restaurants offered metal knives and forks
instead.

China is chopping down 20 million mature trees a year to
feed its disposable chopstick habit

If Mr Bo's suggestion is widely adopted, it would be a
dark moment in the chopstick's 4,000-year history.

It was Da Yu, the founder of the Xia dynasty, who is said
to have first used two sticks to eat his food in roughly
2100 BC.

It was an invention born of urgency. In his rush to reach
a flood zone, Da Yu did not want to wait for his meat in
his wok to cool, instead seizing a pair of twigs and
wolfing down his meal.

Chopsticks quickly became popular around Asia. However
Chinese chopsticks are longer than their Korean and
Japanese counterparts in order to reach the communal
dishes in the centre of the table. Koreans also often use
metal chopsticks because of their love of barbecue.

The fork, meanwhile, is said to have been invented by the
Romans, but did not become common in northern Europe
until the 18th century.

Catherine de Medici is said to have taken the fork with
her from Florence to France in the 16th century, when she
married Henri II, along with many of her chefs, a moment
that many Italians claim as the genesis of French
cuisine.

Today, however, China is chopping down 20 million mature
trees a year to feed its disposable chopstick habit,
according to Mr Bo.

Nor can China find enough wood in its own forests. China
is now the world's largest importer of wood and even
imports chopsticks from America, where a company in
Georgia realised that the state's native gum wood would
be perfectly suited to make the utensil.

A previous estimate from China's state forestry
administration, based on statistics from 2004 to 2009,
put the yearly total at 57 billion disposable chopsticks,
a much lower sum.

Then again, as the comedian Jerry Seinfeld once joked,
parting the Chinese from their chopsticks is no mean
feat.

�They�re hanging in there with the chopsticks, aren�t
they? You know they�ve seen the fork. They�re staying
with the sticks.

�I don�t know how they missed it. Chinese farmer gets up,
works in the field with a shovel all day. Shovel. Spoon.
Come on. You�re not plowing 40 acres with a couple of
pool cues!�

Related Articles

Does the chopstick diet work? 16 Jan 2009
US exports chopsticks to China 02 Aug 2011

More at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9926599/Chinese-must-swap-chopsticks-for-knife-and-fork.html

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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