The following is an excerpt from the catalog of a manufacturer of chopsticks in China. It reflects how much the Chinese regard chopsticks as a vital part of their history and culture.
Thoughts and Feelings on Chopsticks
Preface
You
come from the remote past, delicate and slim, despite the vicissitudes of life in a fast-changing world. You carry on towards the future with determination. Your name is 'Jia', 'Kuai' or 'Zhu'. Billions of people hold you tight in hand three times a day - breakfast, lunch and supper - continuously from generation to generation linked by the ties of blood, good luck and long life.
Legends
In the beginning our ancestors taught us how to drill wood for fire. And then how to use it to cook food. Thus, man stepped from savagery into civilization.
When
King Zhou demanded to be served at meals with ivory chopsticks, he was destined to lose the heavenly mandate for his Shang Dynasty.
When Xuan Zong awarded his prime minister a pair of gold chopsticks for his straightforward admonition, he set a model of correct governance that went down as a shining achievement of the great Tang Dynasty.
When
Empress Dowager Ci Xi had a pair of chopsticks wrapped with a piece of
silk before burying it in a dug hole to pray for the safe delivery of
her heir apparent, she was unable, nevertheless, to arrest the downward
trend of the fall of the Zing Dynasty.
When President Nixon used
chopsticks at the state banquet given in his honor in Beijing,
Sino-American unfriendliness began to thaw.
Oh chopsticks,
commonplace household utensils in China, you have borne witness to the
full sweep of the millennium-old magnificent cultural history of China.
Subtle Associations
Let me present you a dozen pairs of chopsticks or twenty-four chopsticks to be exact. Each has a wonderful tale to tell.
'Dozen'
stands for the twelve months of the year together with their respective
features. 'Twenty-four' is for the twenty-four festivals spread over
the four seasons with their respective propitious winds and rains for
farming. Together they provide for happy and lucky occasions for one to
make great plans or launch ambitious enterprises, and will make your
family rich and prolific with offspring ever more and more successful.
Let
me present you a dozen pairs of red chopsticks as the dowry for your
daughter, wishing the couple to love each other dearly and their family
to grow up in prosperous and healthy circumstances. Let me again present
you a dozen pairs of red chopsticks to celebrate the laying of the
upper beam in your new house. May the location of your house attract a
continuous flow of financial resources.
Let me finally lay a dozen
pairs of chopsticks on the banquet table under the new roof to
entertain your honored guests and relatives.
Now shall we raise the golden cups to pray for the happiness and the best of health of all!
All
Chinese treasures are wonderful but only chopsticks are auspicious as
well. Let all of us be well-satisfied. Long live the People's Republic
of China!
Characteristics
Graceful green bamboo is firmly
rooted in rugged cliffs, tenacious, noble, unrelenting, and ever
pressing forward. It is made into a pair of plain-looking chopsticks.
They symbolize equality, amity, cleverness and dexterity, equal share of
weal and woe, and quiet devotion. These characteristics fully reflect
the fine qualities of Chinese youth, male and female alike. Even
conjugal bliss and racial unity are achieved through chopsticks as
go-between. They are the cultural heritage of the East including Japan
and Korea. Let the rest of the world regard us in a new light whether we
are addressing to Australia or Africa or to France or the United
States.
Tribute
Why do Chinese students capture the world
academic olympiad championships so often? Scientists say that the use of
chopsticks can raise one's intelligence.
Why do the Japanese head the world's life span? They often change their chopsticks - a hygienic habit.
The
Chinese chopsticks have made a great contribution to the civilization
of the world. Why haven't they become the fifth great invention of
China? They not only have wielded a great influence on its neighboring
countries but have made them regard China in a totally new light as
well.
Who of the billion-odd Chinese do not use chopsticks at
meals? The luxuriant blue bamboo covering the mountains are their
inexhaustible raw material which also makes the hills ever green and
waters ever blue and China incomparably beautiful.
Tens of
billions of people must have eaten with chopsticks through the ages.
Have you ever realized the significance of such a striking statistic? If
the people of the whole world use chopsticks instead of forks and
knives, what a tremendous amount of metallic resources can be saved.
Blessings
A
pair of chopsticks may represent a phase of long history, a stretch of
beautiful scenery, a moving story, a close-up, a difficult complex, or
simply honest blessings. Let the plain-looking chopsticks be the
cultural messenger of China to disseminate throughout the world the
finest racial image it can leave for mankind so that it may go down in
history as the eternal Chinese story in the treasury of human culture.
May happiness always keep company with good people! May the whole world live in eternal peace!