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It is such a sort of instrumental part
-
of our cooking vocabulary,
in terms of the utensils.
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And it was like, that's interesting,
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there are people
who live without chopsticks.
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(Energetic music)
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Chopsticks are a pair of two long sticks
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used to eat things with one hand.
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Holding chopsticks
is a little bit like holding a pencil,
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except that you have two of them
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and you move them together
in a pincer movement.
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Most of them are made out of wood.
They're also made out of plastic, bamboo,
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jade, gold, silver, and even ivory,
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though I think that's not so cool anymore.
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Chopsticks are really well designed
for eating small bits of food.
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They're good for picking up noodles.
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If you're skilled, you can eat rice,
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pick up dumplings, little pieces of meat.
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There are some no-nos with chopsticks.
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You should not use
the chopsticks like drumsticks,
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which I know is tempting.
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You don't want to stick chopsticks
into a bowl of rice face-up.
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And the reason for that is it actually
looks like a bowl of incense,
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so it sort of echoes death.
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Chopsticks are used
in a huge portion of the world,
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across much of Asia,
about 1.5 billion people
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are covered in the chopsticks sphere.
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Different cultures have slightly different
variations of chopsticks.
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Chinese chopsticks
will tend to be long and round,
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Korean chopsticks
are flatter and often made of metal,
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and Japanese chopsticks tend to be round
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and very, very pointy.
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While chopsticks
are actually really commonplace
-
in American society today,
-
there was definitely a time
in the late 1800s
-
where this idea that Asian men,
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because they ate rice with sticks,
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were of a different quality
than American men,
-
who ate proper meat with a knife and fork.
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But when China and the United States
-
began their diplomatic
engagement in the 1970s,
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Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger,
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had to practice eating with chopsticks.
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What's been really interesting to see
-
is that as Asian cuisine has moved
from the East into the West,
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chopsticks have become
part of the experience.
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There's evidence of chopsticks
as long ago as the Shang dynasty,
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which is about 3000 years ago,
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and they loved tripods
during the Shang dynasty.
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So when you cook with these big tripods,
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chopsticks were actually really useful
-
because it was a way
for you to stir and to reach
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without getting burned
as the water was boiling
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in these really big pots.
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Chinese culture has knives and has forks.
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It uses them in many cases for cooking.
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But in terms of like what
moved into the dining room,
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it was the chopsticks.
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One of the things about Asian cooking
-
is that it often comes
in very small pieces.
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And I think part of that
has to do with the fact
-
that it's actually
a lot more energy-efficient
-
to cook little pieces quickly.
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But also, then you don't have to cut them.
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So you have a circular influence,
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where the type of food that is cooked
allows people to use chopsticks,
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and then the fact that you have chopsticks
influences the food that you can cook.
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But at the same time, chopsticks reflect
the communal nature of eating food.
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You'll have these dishes
that you put in the middle,
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it's very family style.
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You go in with your chopsticks,
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and you put it on your rice,
and then you eat individually.
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There's actually a famous sort of legend
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where everyone has these
really, really long chopsticks,
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like way too long
for them to feed themselves.
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And so in hell, everyone starves
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because they can't pick up food
and put it in their mouths.
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But in heaven, people
take the same chopsticks
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and then feed each other.
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(Energetic music)