Help! There are Chopsticks in my Home!
On my first trip to China in 2005, I bought a large pack of chopsticks from the local supermarket. They weren’t fancy chopsticks. Just regular, undecorated, wooden ones that cost less than a dollar. I only bought them, because I felt like, being in China, I was obligated to own a set of chopsticks. I didn’t really intend to use them. So when I returned to the US, I dumped them in my parents’ silverware drawer, and they stayed there forever, untouched and unloved.
Skip ahead in time: I’m now married to a Chinese woman, and chopsticks are a normal part of our lunches and dinners. Chopsticks go through the dishwasher, fall off the top rack, and get stuck in the bottom on a regular basis. There are times when we actually run out of chopsticks and have to wash them by hand. Poetically, then, I retrieved the old chopsticks from my parents’ house and, after six years, finally put them to use. See, I knew there was a reason why I bought those.
Responses to “Help! There are Chopsticks in my Home!”
Comments RSS Feed – All CommentsHopfrog — 13 February 2012 @ 1:52 pm
It’s weird, everytime I eat Chinese food here at home I grab the chopsticks without even thinking about it. Something just feels so right about grabbing a dumpling with chopsticks instead of a fork. I enjoy using them, even if they seem less functional than silverware. After our tour of the Great Wall, they dragged us to a jade factory for lunch where about 10 of us Americans sat around a table and ate. Felt like a rockstar being able to wield those stix with ease while my compatriates contorted their hands in pained frustration.
Clark — 15 February 2012 @ 10:12 am
Yeah, there are some dishes that actually work better with chopsticks. And after a while, as you start to get good with chopsticks, it makes you forget why they were so damn hard to learn in the first place.
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