Chopsticks!

[Holdfast]

Spend a month in China and you'll be able to eat soup with chopsticks.

I spent a month there and in all that time, I don't recall seeing a single fork. You either become expert...or you go hungry.

I had a similar experience in Japan - the hospital canteen didn't have regular cutlery... so I got either got adept at using chopsticks or I would have had to stick with miso soup! They had the Japanese-style tapered & lacquered cylindrical kind of chopsticks. They were harder to learn with, but do give you much more fine control once you "get" them.

The waribashi snap-apart square wooden type one tends to find in restaurants are easier to learn but make it much less easy to deal with larger items since you can't tease apart veggies or fish or whatever with the blunt ends as easily as you can with the tapered hashi.

 

[An Officer]

It took me a little while, but after much persistence, I can now easily pick up even the last grain of rice from my bowl.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

I learned how to use them on a Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo in 1973. As the first meal was served, I asked the purser (Head flight attendant) how to use them. He gave me a 4-minute lesson that worked perfectly and has lasted to this day. I taught his method to my wife and both daughters and we can all wade through an Asian meal without making a mess on our shirts.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Spend a month in China and you'll be able to eat soup with chopsticks.

I spent a month there and in all that time, I don't recall seeing a single fork. You either become expert...or you go hungry.

My brother spent a month in Japan. He is now incapable of eating rice with a fork.

 

[Tim]

^Not for a man with skilled hands.

Yep. I can pick up the tiniest speck of food with my chopsticks, since I was taught at a tender age by my Chinese mother. I generally like the round kind, slightly tapered to the tip (but not the too-short Japanese type). The edges of the square type can be a bit uncomfortable if you're wrestling with larger foodstuffs.

It just feels wrong for me to eat Asian food without chopsticks.

 

[Triskelion]

Korean style are long, thin and metal. Really lethal. I prefer simple wooden ones! The Japanese say it's bad luck for a warrior to break his chopstick before a battle, so they carry around metal ones!

I can go all Mr Miagi on a pair of 'em! Eat that fly!

For the Chinese, using a knife and fork may be "barbaric" (as may be not actually being from China), and when you watch them use the knife and fork you understand why! But chopsticks are civilized, and so is fifteen people sharing one bowl of stew with cow stomach, jellyfish, pig's blood, brain who knows what else in it! Now them's goooooood eats Aunt Bee!