Yang-May Ooi

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3167/2571474701_375990f58c_m.jpg" align="left" title="chopsticks" border="0" width=30% height=30% hspace="6" vspace="6"</a/> There is a scene in a Woody Allen movie where he has taken his date to a Chinese restaurant. He is trying to impress her by showing of how much he knows about Chinese food and Chinese dining so he gives her a demonstration of how to eat with a bowl and chopsticks the “proper” Chinese way. He picks up the ball in one hand, bringing it to his mouth and starts to shovel rice and meet into his mouth while she is speaking and describing to her this skill that he is displaying. Of course, this being Woody Allen, he ends up with rice falling out of his mouth and grease all over his lips and chin, while his monologue is punctuated with slurping and sucking noises as he hoovers - or tries to hoover — the food into his mouth. Needless to say, his date is completely repulsed!

The brunt of the joke is the Woody Allen character and his pretentiousness rather than on the “proper” way of eating with a bowl and chopsticks. However, the comedy highlights how difficult it is to eat elegantly the Chinese way and how much real skill and training is needed to do it well. You are meant to sit up straight, bringing the bowl close to your lips but you aren’t meant to shovel it into your mouth like an animal but rather you should take delicate bites with controlled movements of your chopsticks. Also, you are not meant to cross your chopsticks and instead you should hold them so that they act in a pinching motion. You are definitely not meant to make whooshing or slurping noises!

I had to make a confession. As a Chinese person, I am an utter failure when it comes to eating with chopsticks. Growing up in Malaysia, we ate most meals with a fork and spoon, using a plate for our food. In Chinese restaurants, I always ask for a fork and spoon, which the waiters would bring with a look of disdain on their face. Once, at a food court in Darling Harbour in Sydney, when my mother and I asked for a fork and spoon to eat our Chinese meal, the lady behind the counter immediately identified us as Malaysians because from her experience of her customers, it was always the Malaysians who handed back the chopsticks in favour of the western implements!

Which is not to say that I can’t eat with chopsticks — it’s just that I’m very clumsy with them and I tend to cross them instead of using the pinching movement. I find it impossible to use them for rice and have to resort to the ceramic spoon, which is generally used for soup. At family dinners, if I use chopsticks, I cannot keep up with the rest of the gang as they adeptly and happily devour the feast while I am still fiddling around with my one increasingly pathetic looking piece of chicken and scattering rice all over myself. So if I am to survive in this Darwinian environment, I have to put my pride to one side and get the most suitable utensils to the job — a fork, spoon and plate - to be sure that I don’t starve.

I have also found to my mortification that I am very ignorant when it comes to the finer points of chopsticks dining. I was at a Japanese restaurant with an English friend who spends a lot of time in Japan on business. He was very deft with his chopsticks and I was having a go with my feeble crossed style. As we were chatting, I paused and stuck my chopsticks into the bowl of sticky rice so that they stood up unaided and picked up my cup of tea. He cried out in horror at that was a very “bad luck “thing to do as it was reminiscent of tombstones or what you do when making an offering to the ancestors at the grave. I quickly plucked out the offending chopsticks, feeling very foolish!

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Photo: thanks to ladybugbkt from flickr.com (CCL)