筷子最早是用来吃饭的吗？
The history of chopsticks
Name: ________________ Date: ________
在中国的饭桌上，每个人面前一般都有一双筷子，有时候还有一个勺子。吃菜、吃面、吃米饭，筷子几乎什么都能做。很多人觉得，中国人一开始就是用筷子吃饭的。可是，事情可能没有这么简单。
考古发现的最早的青铜筷子，来自河南安阳的殷墟，差不多有三千两百年的历史。那是六根青铜做的筷子，每根大约二十六厘米长。专家认为，它们很可能不是用来吃饭的，而是用来做饭的：在一大锅开水或者很热的油里，用筷子把食物翻一翻、拿出来，手就不会被烫到。
那古人吃饭用什么呢？在很长的时间里，主要是勺子，有时候也直接用手。那时候北方人常吃小米做的粥，用勺子当然更方便。《礼记》里甚至有一条规矩：吃黍做的饭，不要用筷子。那筷子用来做什么呢？主要是吃汤里的菜。
后来，人们吃的东西越来越多样，筷子也越来越重要。在很长一段时间里，筷子和勺子是一起用的。到了明朝，筷子才成了中国人吃饭最主要的工具。
还有一件有意思的事：古时候，筷子不叫“筷子”，叫“箸”。为什么后来改名了呢？明朝有一位文人叫陆容，他在书里记下了这样一种说法：在江南一带，坐船的人和开船的人最怕船停下来。可是“箸”听起来跟“住”一样，而“住”有停下来的意思。坐在船上吃饭，每说一次“箸”，听起来都像在说“停住”，这太不吉利了！于是大家反过来叫它“快”，希望船走得快一点。后来，因为它常常是竹子做的，人们又在“快”字上面加了一个竹字头，就成了今天的“筷”。
所以，下次你拿起筷子的时候，可以想一想：你手里的东西，最早是在锅旁边帮人做饭的；它的名字，来自一群怕船停下来的人。
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 面前 | miànqián | in front of; before; in the face of |
| 双 | shuāng | two; both; double; dual |
| 筷子 | kuàizi | chopsticks |
| 勺子 | sháozi | spoon; ladle |
| 用 | yòng | to use; use; usefulness |
| 简单 | jiǎndān | simple; easy |
| 发现 | fāxiàn | to discover; to find; discovery |
| 来自 | láizì | to come from; to originate from |
| 历史 | lìshǐ | history |
| 认为 | rènwéi | to think; to believe; to consider |
| 或者 | huòzhě | or |
| 大约 | dàyuē | approximately; about |
English (for the teacher)
At a Chinese dinner table, everyone usually has a pair of chopsticks in front of them, and sometimes a spoon as well. Dishes, noodles, rice: chopsticks can do almost everything. Many people assume Chinese people ate with chopsticks from the very beginning. But it may not be that simple.
The oldest bronze chopsticks found so far come from Yinxu, the ruins at Anyang in Henan, and are about 3,200 years old. They are six bronze chopsticks, each about 26 centimetres long. Experts think they were most likely not for eating but for cooking: in a big pot of boiling water or very hot oil, you could turn the food over and lift it out with chopsticks without burning your hands.
So what did people in ancient times eat with? For a very long time it was mainly spoons, and sometimes just their hands. Back then people in the north often ate millet porridge, and a spoon was of course handier for that. The Book of Rites even has a rule: don't use chopsticks when you eat a dish of millet. So what were chopsticks for? Mainly for eating the vegetables in soup.
Later, as what people ate became more varied, chopsticks became more and more important. For a long time chopsticks and spoons were used together. Only in the Ming dynasty did chopsticks become the main thing Chinese people ate with.
Here's another interesting thing: in ancient times chopsticks weren't called kuaizi but zhu. So why did the name change? A Ming dynasty writer called Lu Rong wrote down one explanation in his book: in the Jiangnan region, people who travelled and worked on boats feared nothing more than their boat coming to a stop. But zhu, chopsticks, sounds just like zhu, which means to stop. Sitting on a boat at dinner, every time you said zhu it sounded like “stop”: how unlucky can you get! So people turned it around and called them kuai, “fast”, hoping the boat would go a bit faster. Later, because they were usually made of bamboo, people added the bamboo radical on top of 快, and that gave today's 筷.
So next time you pick up your chopsticks, think about it: the thing in your hand started out next to a cooking pot, helping people cook, and its name comes from a crowd of people who were scared their boat would stop.