What is the cultural connotation of chopsticks?

What is the cultural connotation of chopsticks?

What is the cultural connotation of chopsticks? Chopsticks are trophies that people get when they abandon barbarism. It has a history of at least 3000 years since it appeared. Let's share the cultural connotation of chopsticks. Come and have a look with me.

What is the cultural connotation of chopsticks? 1 1. Chopsticks are round at one end and square at the other. The circle symbolizes the sky, and the square symbolizes the place, corresponding to the round place. This is the basic principle for China people to understand the world.

The top is round and the bottom is in direct contact with food, which means "food is the sky for the people."

2. When holding chopsticks, the thumb and forefinger are at the top, the ring finger and little finger are at the bottom, and the middle finger is in the middle, which is the image of three talents in heaven and earth. This is China people's understanding of the relationship between man and the world.

3. A pair of chopsticks is divided into two pieces, which means that China people abide by the concepts of Tai Chi and Yin and Yang.

Taiji is one, yin and yang are two, and one is divided into two, which means that everything is composed of two opposites; The combination of yin and yang also means a perfect result.

4. There are eight diagrams in Zhouyi: gan, Kan, Gen, Zhen, Xun, Li, Kun and Hui; Dark gossip: rest, life, injury, du, scenery, death, shock, and opening.

There are two chopsticks that are two, corresponding to gossip, meaning "mouth".

Chopsticks themselves are straight and long, corresponding to "Xun" in gossip, meaning "Ru".

5. When using chopsticks, one is active and the other is passive; The initiative is yang and the passive is yin, which is the image of two instruments.

6. Putting a pair of chopsticks on the dining table is like putting a pen on the desk, which is a sign of elegance.

7. The standard length of chopsticks is seven inches and six minutes, which means that people have secular desires to show their essential differences from animals.

8. Chopsticks also have the functions of acupuncture, massage and scraping.

In the past, people in the Jianghu could solve their own problems as long as they had a pair of chopsticks. Even if they forget to bring it, they will break a branch or reed, grind it on a stone and wash it with water.

What is the cultural connotation of chopsticks? Chopsticks are a necessary tool for everyone in China to eat. More precisely, chopsticks, called chopsticks in ancient times, are a kind of eating tool with national characteristics invented by Han people in China. China is the birthplace of chopsticks. It has a history of 3,000 years and is the main area in the world where chopsticks are used to eat. Chopsticks seem to be just two very simple thin sticks, but they have the functions of picking, poking, clamping, mixing and scraping, and they are convenient to use and cheap. Chopsticks are also a unique tableware in the world today. People from all over the world come from China, but people in China eat with chopsticks. This habit has not changed for thousands of years.

Small chopsticks, simple chopsticks, China people and even orientals (including North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, Japan and Southeast Asian countries) have been eating with chopsticks for thousands of years. In fact, this small simple chopsticks has its rich and profound cultural connotation. It can be said that chopsticks are the quintessence of China (quintessence refers to the most representative and unique cultural heritage of the Chinese nation, which has been welcomed by people in many times).

Chopsticks were called chopsticks in ancient times. The ancient book Han Feizi-Yu Lao records that "the former is like, and Ji Zi is terrible." Zhou Wang was the monarch at the end of Shang Dynasty, so it can be seen that chopsticks made of ivory appeared in China as early as 1 1 century BC. In other words, China has used chopsticks for at least 3000 years. In addition, there are many folklore about chopsticks: First, Jiang Ziya was inspired by the god bird and invented the bamboo chopsticks; It is said that da ji invented using Hosta as chopsticks to please Zhou Wang; There are also legends that Dayu invented chopsticks when he took hot food from branches to save time.

What is the cultural connotation of chopsticks? China has a profound culture and a long history. China's chopsticks culture has also been staged in China for several years. There are great differences in food culture and habits between China and western countries. From the perspective of tableware alone, China people eat with chopsticks, while westerners eat with knives and forks, each with its own habits. Knife, fork and chopsticks, although only small dining utensils, greatly reflect the different eating habits and different life concepts of the East and the West.

Each has its own characteristics. A careful study of China's food culture will reveal that chopsticks culture is an indispensable part of it. The use of chopsticks not only solves the problem of eating utensils in China in recent years, but also embodies the principle that people in China pay attention to what they can do, and embodies the harmonious relationship between man and nature.

Chopsticks, although only two thin long sticks, have a great influence on us from the perspective of food culture. Chopsticks, as a dining tool, not only affects our diet, but also contains cultural connotations worthy of further study, understanding, inheritance and development. However, in recent years, it seems that the chopsticks culture has not been completely inherited and developed by the younger generation in China. Instead, it slowly emerges and loses unconsciously.

How to save this phenomenon deserves our deep thought. Let's talk about some irrelevant personal views on this issue.

The disappearance of chopsticks culture

Chopsticks are the quintessence of China. It is light and flexible, unique in the world tableware, and is praised as "Oriental civilization" by westerners. There is no essential difference between the chopsticks we use today and their ancestors, but more and more chopsticks are made of' high-tech' materials such as plastic. The evolution and development of chopsticks represent the wisdom of China for several years. For chopsticks, many famous masters at home and abroad have given high praise. French writer roland barthes thinks that chopsticks have a maternal tenderness compared with knives and forks. They don't cut, scratch, destroy or wear ... they like proper care and gentle movements when moving babies.

However, it seems that such a great "Oriental civilization" cannot be completely passed down in today's diversified information. Looking around "post-80s" and "post-90s", how many people know the taboo of using chopsticks? Or how many people can use chopsticks correctly? Most young people use chopsticks in a way similar to holding a pencil, and both pencils and chopsticks are' long and straight', which leads many people to mistakenly think that using chopsticks and pencils is the same method and posture. And the etiquette of using chopsticks that should be paid attention to at the dinner table must be something that few young people really understand.

In the final analysis, the reason for this phenomenon is that China people do not pay enough attention to chopsticks culture. In this process, parents should play an important role as a bridge in view of the particularity of chopsticks used in family daily diet. But if parents don't pay enough attention to it, it's not surprising that this phenomenon appears.

The Inheritance of Chopsticks Culture to China Traditional Culture

Chopsticks culture is only a small part of China's profound traditional culture. However, from our "peep" of chopsticks culture, people will inevitably worry about how to inherit the splendid traditional culture of China. Just like the course of chopsticks, China's traditional culture has been deeply integrated into the thinking and behavior norms of Chinese descendants after thousands of years of deduction and sublation. However, in recent years, the lack of traditional culture of the younger generation and the impact of multiculturalism have made people worry about whether the growth of the new generation can make correct value judgments and choices. This involves the question of how to inherit traditional culture.

Chopsticks culture comes from food culture, and most of them are found in family diet. The author thinks that it is a good way to inherit chopsticks culture and integrate it into family education. On closer inspection, chopsticks culture, as a part of China traditional culture, actually belongs to family education.

In today's society, why are there more and more phenomena of "worshipping foreign things and admiring foreign things", or have caused the crisis phenomenon that teenagers lose their traditional culture of the motherland? A large part of the reason is that many parents in modern families do not attach importance to traditional culture, or parents themselves have a strange phenomenon of "worshipping foreign things and obsessing foreign things" because they hate the traditional culture of the motherland. Family education focuses on teaching by example. How parents' own cultural literacy will influence children's cognition of "cultural prejudice" imperceptibly in the early stage in the process of educating their children. As children grow up, it will gradually affect their concern for traditional culture.

The usage rules of chopsticks require that chopsticks should be held conveniently, flexibly, firmly and elegantly. By looking at the way a person holds and uses chopsticks, we can know his birth and education, personality, temperament and professional status. In a word, a person's chopsticks etiquette can reflect his family education.

In addition, as far as the use structure of chopsticks itself is concerned, it implies the principle that one day should be straight, two days should be neat and three days should be harmonious. If parents carefully consider these traditional truths, it is not difficult to see that this coincides with the concept of "harmony" advocated by Chinese traditional Taoist thought. From point to surface, it is not only a meal, but also to let children know the traditional culture of the motherland.

Therefore, attaching importance to the role of chopsticks culture in family education has become the unshirkable responsibility of every parent in every family. In this way, a seemingly macroscopic problem of inheriting national traditional culture has been refined into the education of every family in China.

Of course, in the process of creating a good family environment for traditional culture education, we should also give full play to the role of school education in inheriting and carrying forward excellent traditional culture and create a good school education environment. As the main body of traditional culture communication, teachers should not only fully grasp and make good use of the traditional cultural carrier-text explanation and teaching, but also require teachers to accurately grasp the profound connotation and inner temperament of culture, especially China culture, and also require teachers to master or collect a large number of practical materials for explanation and demonstration. More importantly, the key is to transform the cultural influence of "moistening things silently" into tangible written explanations and accurately convey them to students.

Teachers can guide and correct students' blindness in the selectivity of traditional culture and multiculturalism in a timely and appropriate manner, so as to know how to make up for the negative effects brought by multiculturalism with traditional culture at a deeper level.

The inheritance of traditional culture is a complex systematic project. We should not only attach importance to the role of family and school, but also undertake certain social responsibilities, such as setting up "parents' courses" to change the defects of the traditional typical paternalistic education model in China, and also publicize traditional culture with the help of various media of modern science and technology, so as to cultivate the atmosphere of the whole society paying attention to and learning traditional culture.

What is the cultural connotation of chopsticks? For China people, using chopsticks is so common that they turn a blind eye to it. However, chopsticks, as the carrier of China people's emotions and the inheritance of spiritual culture, have influenced China people's thinking and actions to some extent. Unfortunately, people often pay little attention to this subtle influence. But it is precisely because of this that this role is even more intangible and huge. It can be said that the origin, appearance and naming of chopsticks are deeply branded with the traditional culture of China.

First of all, look at the traditional culture of China from the origin of chopsticks.

In primitive society, our ancestors must have experienced the stage of grasping with both hands and eating with both hands. However, with the appearance and continuous evolution of eating tools, Chinese descendants finally gave up using fingers and knives and forks, forming a tradition of eating with chopsticks. What kind of cultural background is hidden behind this?

1, eating spicy food habits

China people are born with the habit of eating spicy food. From the point of view of digestive physiological characteristics, Xie's Book of Changes in Oriental Nutrition mentioned that modern anatomy found that the fine structure of the digestive system of orientals and westerners is not the same, and the morphological structure and organizational structure of various digestive organs are also different. Oriental people prefer hot food and cooked food. Therefore, in order to meet the physiological needs of digestion, the ancients will inevitably use all conditions to create hot food that people like. With the discovery and utilization of fire, the ancestors used bamboo branches to place and turn food because they could not grab cooked food directly with their hands. After a long time of practice, I learned the method of holding food with bamboo sticks, so I had chopsticks, the prototype of chopsticks.

In addition, the ancients attached great importance to sacrificial activities. Tribute is an important part of sacrifice. Because they think that ghosts and gods mainly absorb the essence of food, in the era of low production technology, the hot air emitted when cooking food is undoubtedly regarded as the best embodiment of the essence. This has led to the tradition that people regard hot food as ritual food. The popularity of hot food will inevitably eliminate the original method of eating directly by hand.

2. Traditional farming civilization

In ancient times, the ancestors' food source was mainly animals. However, people in ancient times ate animals and animals. As for Shennong, there are many people and few animals. So people were forced by hunger and turned to eat crops. The suitable geographical environment and climatic conditions of the three major river basins also enabled the ancestors of the Chinese nation to enter the agricultural cultural form earlier and obtain a stable food source. This also determines that an important feature of Chinese national culture is the tradition of granular food.

Both millet in the Yellow River valley and rice in the Yangtze River valley can be directly shelled and cooked to obtain rice and porridge. Once rice and porridge are determined as the staple food, knives and forks will not be used as the main dining tools. In addition, influenced by farming culture, soup became the main course of ancient ancestors. The dishes in the soup are not only inconvenient to grasp directly by hand, but also impossible to cut with a knife and fork. It is natural to clamp them with two sticks.

3. The use of porcelain rice bowls

China ancient pottery was found in Qujialing cultural site in the middle of Neolithic Age, while porcelain was found in Han Dynasty site. According to Shuowen, a rice cooker is a rice cooker. Later it was written as a bowl. It can be said that the rice bowl as a tool for holding food was produced very early. However, the rice bowl is not limited to the function of holding, but also can be used as an auxiliary tool for eating. With the invention of porcelain, the thickness of the bowl wall has also been greatly reduced, which is more convenient for people to sip from the bowl. So as to make up the shortage that chopsticks are inconvenient to obtain liquid food, and make the coordination with chopsticks more seamless. Chopsticks have gradually become the traditional cultural symbol of the Chinese nation.

Second, look at the traditional culture of China from the name of chopsticks.

The name of chopsticks has also gone through three stages of evolution from chopsticks to chopsticks. In this naming change, we can also feel the traditional cultural atmosphere.

The early chopsticks were called chopsticks, and the earliest ancient book found at present was the predecessor of Han Fei Zi Yu Lao in the Warring States Period, because it was like chopsticks, and Ji Zi was afraid of it. And the name Zhu has been handed down. It was not until the Ming Dynasty that chopsticks were renamed chopsticks. It is recorded in Lu Rong's Miscellaneous Notes on Gardens in the Ming Dynasty that folk customs are taboo everywhere and do all kinds of evil. From chopsticks to chopsticks, we can see that taboo culture is closely related to our lives and affects people's lives. In addition, the national psychology of China people advocates even numbers. Therefore, the suffix "Chopsticks" was added to the back of chopsticks, and finally it was named Chopsticks, which was more in line with the psychological expectation of China people.

Third, look at the traditional culture of China from the outside of chopsticks.

Actually, chopsticks, as a symbol of China traditional culture, can be seen from its appearance. First of all, the square ruler is the most common shape of chopsticks. Harmony is the traditional modeling of the Chinese nation. Chopsticks, annexed by Fiona Fang, are undoubtedly an excellent embodiment of China people's traditional modeling concept and aesthetic taste, and also echo the already existing cosmology and outlook on life in China's traditional culture.

Secondly, chopsticks are not only scientific, but also the embodiment of national spirit. As we all know, chopsticks must be straight, otherwise it is difficult to hold food. And this straightness is also in line with the spiritual connotation of the Chinese nation. Therefore, emperors often used expensive chopsticks as a reward to reward their officials. In ancient books, there is a story about chopsticks given by Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty. I don't give you gold, but cover up your embarrassment and show your straightforwardness. In addition, chopsticks also contain the characteristics that China people advocate cooperation and attach importance to coordination. The form of paired chopsticks reflects this. We know that the function of a single chopstick is limited. However, once two chopsticks are put together and used together, it becomes an extension of human fingers, and it can do almost everything that hands can do. Therefore, it is particularly important to learn how to coordinate two chopsticks and make them cooperate tacitly.

Fourthly, we can see the traditional culture of China from the use of chopsticks.

The use of chopsticks also reflects the national character and value orientation of China people. Roland Bater described chopsticks in "Empire of Symbols" as follows: Food is no longer the prey under people's violence, but the material transmitted harmoniously. He said that chopsticks have a maternal tenderness compared with knives and forks, because it is a cautious action to move a baby without cutting, grasping, destroying or wearing chopsticks. It is a force, not an impulse. Indeed, compared with the tyranny and arrogance shown by westerners who cut raw meat with knives and forks at the dinner table, it is indeed introverted and reserved for orientals to pick up cooked food with chopsticks. It can also be seen that chopsticks imply the harmony of Chinese tradition.

Besides, Mr. Cai Yuanpei once commented on chopsticks and knives and forks: China used knives and forks to eat in ancient times, but our nation is a country that loves peace and etiquette. We always think that knives and forks are weapons of war, and they are too unsightly to use when eating, so we switched to chopsticks as early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Generation after generation, China people are proud of using chopsticks. There is no doubt that etiquette was emphasized in ancient China, and there were many norms and taboos in the use of chopsticks. If you can't put chopsticks on the table with uneven length, it's unlucky; Chopsticks should not be inserted directly into food, because it is only done when offering sacrifices to the dead; In addition, when being a guest, only the host can move chopsticks first, and the guests can move chopsticks; It is also impolite to rummage on the plate with chopsticks while eating. These numerous etiquette taboos are the embodiment of China's respect for etiquette.