The origin of chopsticks

"China's First Invention" —— Chopsticks and Its Philosophy

-On the great ideas and new weapons for the rejuvenation and reunification of the Chinese nation.

When the western "four great inventions" manned spacecraft, atomic bomb, cloning and network industries swept the world, this country, which claimed to have the "four great inventions" of the East in history, was not silent. This is because the sages who first invented papermaking, printing, gunpowder and compass failed to bring permanent honor to the descendants of the Chinese people. Once upon a time, western papermaking and printing surpassed China. The compass let you discover the new continent and many colonies, and gunpowder and foreign guns finally blew their doors open. Moreover, China's four minor inventions, ceramics, spinning wheel, cloisonne and seismograph, as well as four pieces of national quintessence silk, tea, traditional Chinese medicine and Peking Opera, have also gone from bad to worse. No wonder many people in China are worried and have many regrets about how many contemporary inventions China has. Isn't there a great invention in ancient China that can inspire the pride and self-esteem of contemporary compatriots?

Arabian nights-the first invention

Faced with this puzzling and puzzling problem, I really don't know how to interpret children's children. I only rely on traditional patriotism education for many years, so I am almost paranoid and confident. China, with a history of 5,000 years of civilization, must have a creature that is ahead of the four great inventions and superior to the origin of foreign civilizations. Otherwise, why can we hope to breed the largest ethnic group in all mankind on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean and the southeast of the Asian continent? Natural selection, survival of the fittest What kind of carrier and inheritance is the strength and wisdom to adapt to the survival and development of this great nation?

Starting from the first survival demand of living things, this paper traces back to a certain demand of the ancestors of Huazi Zonghan, who changed their original habits of eating animals and blood from the fire from the time they knew how to slash and burn. Because of the high temperature of flame and hot soup, it is not allowed to follow the habit of reaching out and grasping, so there are substitutes for fingers, arrows, spears or branches. Obviously, a single arrow only has the function of stabbing and picking, which is far less convenient than holding it with two fingers. The most primitive thinking of our ancestors has known that a dexterous thumb can be stretched with two branches. Moreover, our ancestors have exercised their fingers freely in hunting and labor skills. They pinched two twigs in their hands, tried their best to insert and pierce clamps, spoon and stir them, and they can also be used for feeding and sowing spoons, frying rolls and frying. It is really a handy food art, from which it can be inferred that the first invention of Hua Han ancestors was born. It is called invention and creation because chopsticks completely conform to the three principles given to invention and creation today: novelty, creativity and practicality, and there are inexhaustible raw materials, which can be used for processing and mass production. Therefore, it can be further asserted that the ancestors invented bows, arrows, spears and some farm tools, so the earliest folk daily necessities were chopsticks. With the popularization and wide use of chopsticks, the materials used to make chopsticks have gradually evolved into branches, wooden strips, bamboo sticks, bamboo strips, bone strips and racks. Its shape and length gradually formed a rule. Its length is due to primitive tribes and the custom of eating around food containers, so it must have a certain length to get food. Moreover, this length must be convenient for the wrist to move within the radius between the food container and the mouth, and the moving radius of the arm is also limited by two fulcrums from the wrist bone to the elbow bone, so the length of the forearm has generally become the length standard of chopsticks. This view is very important. Is the concept of ancestor length really related to chopsticks? In fact, primitive people's initial confirmation of distance and length is often based on the principle of ergonomics, with self as the scale, including fist, finger and stride, extending to the range of spears and arrows, but this formation is obviously not as convenient as chopsticks. Because of the birth of chopsticks, not only the custom of surrounding food was determined, but also the diameter and width of the square table and round table for eating were determined with the length of chopsticks and arms as the radius, and the convention of the length of the table and the number of people eating in the space was determined. In the end, chopsticks became the length unit of the original size, and a city ruler was about equal to the length of forearm plus fist, so was the original chopsticks. It is precisely because wooden chopsticks and bamboo chopsticks are easy to bend, coupled with the development of folk houses and utensils, people gradually move from the wild to the indoor, and the chopsticks on dining tables and utensils are gradually short and exquisite. As for the shape of chopsticks, the upper and lower parts are round, which is probably related to the theory of heaven and earth advocated by our ancestor Fiona Fang. Since the sky is round, it is natural to hold Fiona Fang in the palm of your hand. Interestingly, many concepts and primitive grades between clans and tribes are also reflected through chopsticks. According to the quality and difficulty of making dental bamboo and wood, according to the length and thickness of chopsticks and the different decorative patterns deliberately made, the grade and generation of chopsticks holders are determined. In order to meet the needs of the traditional etiquette country, chopsticks have evolved into gifts and sacrifices. When offering sacrifices to the gods, people insert chopsticks into the offerings. In order to determine the time of worship, someone lit vertical wooden chopsticks and bamboo chopsticks to time. Then, people found that chopsticks made of a certain kind of wood would emit fragrance after burning, or form a weak flame, which seemed to drive away mosquitoes, flies, insects and ants, drive away hungry ghosts and ghosts, and increased the mystery of the ceremony. The earliest incense burning and candle burning came into being in this way. It was not until later generations knew how to stick spices and paraffin on chopsticks that candles and incense burning appeared, but their carrier was a chopstick.

Chopsticks are so wonderful that they are endowed with great plasticity by our ancestors, which in turn stimulates the creativity of our compatriots. Because primitive tribes developed production while creating civilization and culture, chopsticks played an irreplaceable role. While chopsticks become a unit of length, people attach equal importance to quantity and number. How to record the results of labor? Before the birth of numbers, people began to use chopsticks as chips, and the progressive coding method of one, two, three and seven came into being. However, when the progressive number needs too many chopsticks, in order to facilitate substitution, decimal mathematics is formed by taking the length and thickness as the system, changing ten short ones for a long one and ten long ones for a thick one. The square numbers created in the early days were chopsticks with uneven length, and the head and tail of the bent chopsticks were based on the digital prototype of horizontal hook and vertical hook. Characterized by symbolism and comprehension, the ancient Chinese characters in China created by chopsticks will inevitably form a square font, because the hard pen, as a writing tool, is originally a chopstick picked up at will. In addition to sketching on the desktop wall on the ground, the wooden bamboo-toothed bone pen also found that it was very useful to tie feathers and animal hair at the end of the pen and dip it in pigments extracted from plant minerals or primitive mud animal blood. Among chopsticks, it is easiest to fill the hollow tube at one end of bamboo chopsticks with feathers, so the use of a large number of writing and painting tools has produced calligraphy paintings and colors and patterns drawn on the clothes of altar objects at home. The Zhong Dingyan Jade Wall Hall in Oracle bones is also attached with various cutting, scraping, painting, branding and carving techniques attached to chopsticks and writing brushes. In order to meet the needs of astronomical warfare, ancestors who were good at metaphysics and Taoism took the altar as the site, zoned the land for Yin and Yang in Fiona Fang, set a chopstick for divination and divination, and then set a long hairpin around the center of Yin and Yang fish as Yin and Yang. This was unexpected by Zhou Wang, who took ivory as a clue. In fact, chopsticks were originally called chopsticks because people said that their sounds were similar to "live" and changed it to "fast". I think that eating fast is a great pleasure in life. How can I not move forward? It is an unusual pair of chopsticks, which strengthens the concept of finger stretching and grasping, and leads to the derivation of pliers and scissors. Chopsticks are arranged crisscross from small to large, from short to long, so that the ancestors living in the cave bird's nest know the composition and function of column beams and bars. Lu Ban's ancestors demonstrated the first horizontal building in ancient China with chopsticks. In ancient temple towers and palace buildings, the arrangement of chopsticks was rigorous and orderly or intrigued. Of course, birdcages and cages are also chopsticks. Therefore, it is related to the synchronous evolution of western nations, who also hold knives and forks in both hands, and different eating and dining rules extend into different styles of culture and thought. The left knife and the right fork are lined up, even becoming a long dining table. Without the pleasure of chopsticks, writing depends on sign language and finger changes, and writing depends on a tube of feathers. As for building a house, whether it is Gothic or Romanesque, it is just a pile of stones, which really lacks the spirituality and charm of this chopstick. Until the European and American guests and friends who have experienced the development of civilization for thousands of years, everyone who wants to appreciate the wonderful cooking in China must learn from chopsticks. Then I realized that the most civilized feast of all mankind is by no means a stream of people with knives and forks. Skilled in using two exquisite chopsticks, you can do relative movements at will. It can be seen that the original relative method of "Yanhuangstein" is thousands of years earlier than that of westerners.

Is it just the original law of relativity? China people only learned too much from a pair of chopsticks, thus forming the unique chopsticks sentiment and philosophy of China people. It is no exaggeration to say that there is nothing greater than the invention and creation of chopsticks throughout the thousands of years of civilization in China. If the author describes chopsticks as the carrier of emotion and the inheritance of culture, as the "first invention" in ancient China, will someone criticize me for being shallow and biased? Yes, since one day more than ten years ago, the author insisted that chopsticks were alarmist because of hunger and cold, I immediately grasped the chopsticks that had been abruptly broken in my hand, and the madman with a whim couldn't help holding the broken chopsticks like a baby. Yes, the broken chopsticks remind me of two fables about chopsticks at that time. One is that there was chaos in the pre-Shang period of the Zhou Dynasty, BC, and there were many disputes among righteous people in various places for the promotion of leaders. A general immediately ordered everyone to pick up the chopsticks on the dining table and fold them. Sure enough, they are easily broken. The general has a chopstick in his hand, and it's time to break it constantly, so he knows that everyone should hold the principle of unity and mutual assistance. People were so impressed with it that they elected it as Zhou Wuwang, so the Shang Dynasty perished in the Western Zhou Dynasty. The second is that in ancient times, a large family often caused trouble because of its large population. Parents specially made three-foot bamboo chopsticks for this purpose, and ordered their families to hold chopsticks and clip vegetables. But chopsticks are too long to feed themselves, so they can only feed the people at the opposite table. Therefore, parents understand the family rule of "don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you" and let the incident go away. "Chopsticks are so extraordinary, I should make a statement for chopsticks and set up a monument for our ancestors! After all, it is with this unusual and extraordinary chopstick that I have eaten for 40 years that I understand the ultimate virtue of my compatriots thinking twice about their relatives every festive season. It turns out that people are like chopsticks, and the spread chopsticks are herringbone ... "Writing a seemingly impossible article makes the pen more full of endless feelings.

The emotional story of Roche chopsticks

In which year and generation did the first pair of China chopsticks begin? Who was the inventor? There is no test. Limited by knowledge and evidence, the author can only make up the history of chopsticks by fable. Despite more than ten years of research and exploration, I have written several articles about chopsticks and published several articles. Among them, in July 1998, the signed article "Philosophical Thinking of Art Neo-Expressionism" published in the column of China Reform Newspaper was particularly famous. 1996 10 Hello New Expressionism Speech produced by Peking University; On February 23rd, 2000, the front-page article Chopsticks and Their Philosophy, published by China Academy of Sciences and organized by China Academy of Engineering and National Natural Science Foundation, attracted people's attention. Based on the principle of self-responsibility, I resolutely assumed the responsibility related to Roche's chopsticks theory, and took pains to study the stretching chopsticks chewed by my compatriots. I know I lack any historical data and evidence, but I have to assert the myth of chopsticks through imagination. Even if this inference is extremely reasonable, its academic value will inevitably be questioned. Therefore, I would rather hope that people who write irony will discriminate against me or discuss with me, otherwise I have to let the author go on in Roche's story. What is "Chopsticks Complex"?

Not to mention the time-honored saying "Think of your loved ones with chopsticks". Before the New Year's Eve, parents always put chopsticks on delicious food and invite their grandparents to enjoy them together. On the Mid-Autumn Festival, people often put chopsticks next to the empty small wine cup of people who are not there to miss their loved ones. The first lesson for children sitting on the dining table is how to hold chopsticks and family guidance for them to hold nearby vegetables. I still remember the first family style in my life, because the food was in front, my father hit me on the head, and I heard two chopsticks click on my huge forehead. In order to save paper and pens when learning Chinese characters and writing, I imitate my father and daub Chinese characters on a stone with chopsticks. When I was a child, my mother taught me that "a chopstick is easy to break, but a chopstick cannot bend". Mother is not only knowledgeable, but also good at knitting and glass painting. The bamboo needles she used to weave the rattan chair on the brown bed were made of several bamboo chopsticks, and her son's sweater was made of sweaters cut from bamboo chopsticks. Later, I cut the chopsticks thin and short, strung a string of wooden beads, and made the first earth abacus for my child after learning. I think when our ancestors invented the first abacus, they probably strung beads together with chopsticks. After that, I wrapped a piece of cloth with chopsticks, made the piston rod of a bamboo water gun for children to have a water fight, cut it into a small piano piece on the horn of the erhu, or cut it into a thin keel on a small kite. But this move stole a small chopstick without consulting my mother, and was scratched by a kitchen knife when cutting the keel. The mother picked up chopsticks and hit her son's little palm, only to see the wounds and blood on her fingers, and she was so sad that she shed tears. Yes, chopsticks are more important than sons. Without saying anything, she bought a bamboo, split it with the hand that cut the candle core when she was young, and cut a lot of bamboo chopsticks and kite keels. "Do it yourself is better than anything. Chopsticks are too short and bamboo is not long enough, which means things are short and strong ... "After listening to my mother's training, we learned something, because I saw chopsticks and bamboo forest. Yiyang, Hunan, known as the hometown of bamboo in China, is full of hundreds of acres of bamboo forests. Bamboo used as bamboo chopsticks has also been made into bamboo handicrafts, such as bamboo mats, bamboo curtains and bamboo utensils, which are well-known at home and abroad. From bamboo houses, bamboo walls and bamboo beds to bamboo stools, bamboo cages and bamboo spoons, people in the bamboo countryside have enjoyed them for generations. By the time I graduated from primary school, it was just in time for the local government to approve the bamboo art factory to recruit artists in order to explore the bamboo art craft that has been passed down for thousands of years. I was/kloc-under 0/4 years old and was admitted as an artist by the factory because of my foundation in art and sculpture. Listening to the words and deeds of skilled teachers, the first class is of course about the tradition of bamboo art. "You know, these bamboo wares were originally handed down by my master's master. No one can tell who is the master, but the first product is chopsticks. It is said that Yiyang is also the birthplace of bamboo chopsticks! " Speakers who are not interested in listening are beneficial. At least I saw with my own eyes that the first bamboo chopsticks machine in China was born in the factory here, and its quality and efficiency simply surprised the craftsmen who worked by hand. Looking at the Chinese characters or dragon and phoenix patterns of Happy Birthday completed by carving machine and pyrography machine on chopsticks, and looking at a pair of gift chopsticks sealed in exquisite packaging boxes, I feel more and more the hard work and selfless dedication of workers day and night, and what feelings they give bamboo chopsticks. It was not until I learned that the words "Made in China" were added to the chopsticks box that I realized that besides overseas Chinese in neighboring countries, many foreigners like chopsticks and Chinese food. Because in their view, chopsticks are a special complex of China people and a traditional culture of China people. Therefore, chopsticks can be seen everywhere in Japan, South Korea and Singapore-Matai, and people who use chopsticks will always have a good impression on each other when enjoying Chinese food.

Chopsticks are really incredible. A great nation, accounting for a quarter of the global population, has always adhered to this national essence for thousands of years. I don't think its appearance is as rich and luxurious as a golden vase and a silver plate porcelain bowl, and its value is far less rare and expensive than its supporting ritual vessels, sacrificial vessels, ornaments and utensils, but people, regardless of their rank, always appear equal in front of chopsticks. Especially in terms of practicality, it is unmatched by most daily appliances. But chopsticks are chopsticks. Although it has spawned so many creatures, although its function affects the diet and survival of millions of people, it is content with its name and status and plays an extremely unusual role. Today, no one even regards it as a great invention in ancient China, and few people explain its great contribution to Chinese civilization from its birth and development.

Are chopsticks just chopsticks? As mentioned above, whether a word is yes or not can be answered. If the above statement of the author's analysis of chopsticks can be established, then the pragmatic principles and idealistic thinking inspired by chopsticks will undoubtedly be projected on the spiritual level of China people in such a long history, and will affect the thinking and emotions of China people to some extent. Because of this influence passed down from generation to generation, people have given chopsticks a certain humanistic connotation. Just like the zodiac, it gives personality to dozens of animals, and also gives personality to dragons and phoenixes, suzaku, Kirin and so on. Since people can compare themselves with many zodiac signs, of course, they can also compare themselves with many of their own creatures. In fact, the four major inventions, four minor inventions and four national quintessences were once the things that China people were most proud of, and they have been using these natural things to build themselves, thus enhancing their self-image and self-personality. Just because the quintessence of Chinese culture has been elevated to an inappropriate height for a long time, once faced with westerners who came from behind in these fields, most people suddenly lost their sense of glory and self-esteem, and a few even looked down on themselves in fear, changing their past self-esteem. At this moment, chopsticks stand upright, supercilious, not only propping up the nerves of China people, but also showing the power to shake the earth as described by Archimedes. Isn't it? Who can roughly calculate how many tons of food whales have swallowed in a country with a population of 100 million in thousands of years, because this astronomical amount of heavy food is not enough to compare with the earth. The miracle is that such a heavy food can be easily put into your mouth with only two pocket levers. This is the chopsticks-style logical thinking, which originated from the chopsticks complex, but inspired the indescribable spirit of innovation and creativity. No wonder Cang Xie used chopsticks to write lyrics, and no wonder Lao Tzu used chopsticks to make divination. If contemporary people don't take chopsticks to elaborate, can they live up to the chopsticks that feed him and raise him, and the chopsticks that refresh him in China? At least the Story of Roche, like chopsticks, tells many true meanings. Our generation is like asking ourselves what it feels like to eat all the chopsticks! Just advise you to be careful, don't gobble up chopsticks, these two straight lines will not rotate with the gastrointestinal tract.