Faai-jee. That’s how to say, chopsticks, in Cantonese. That’s what my wife taught me. When we were first married, she taught me many Cantonese words for everyday things. One day, just kidding around, I called them choppers. As in, “Please hand me the choppers.”
“Faai-jee,” she corrected me. “They are called faai-jee.”
“Faai-jee?” I tried to say it like she had just said it.
“Yes. That’s what we call them in Hong Kong.”
The Japanese call them hashi. In Korea they are called jeotgarak. In Vietnam, dua. In America, chopsticks.
Chopsticks are called chopsticks, or so it is thought, because in Chinese Pidgin English, the words, chop-chop, indicate hurry. Pidgin English was a form of combining English and Cantonese in the 17th century so that traders could understand and be understood by the Chinese people. The word chopsticks could also possibly be a variation of the word, chow, meaning food. So, hurry up eat food. I suppose. Chopsticks allow one to eat quickly, I guess. If one uses them right.
My wife’s family always comment on my abilities in the use of faai-jee. They always seem amazed that I can actually pick up my food. They make remarks about how I am just as good with faai-jee as the kids. Hell, I think, I’m way better than that. Growing up in San Francisco, I learned to use chopsticks when I was just a kid. To prove my point, I’ll start deftly picking up small things like peas, or tiny chunks of water chestnuts that the kids struggle with. Or I will pick up and hold slippery pieces of food, like pieces of squid or tofu. I’ll hold the piece of food up so they can observe just how adept I am. Look! See? Being able to hold the food, at least long enough to bring it to your mouth without dropping it, is the important thing. I figured that out a long time ago.
In a Chinese restaurant, whenever someone asks me if I would like a fork, I say “M-hai (m-hai meaning no)”. I tell them that I’m fine, m-goi (meaning thank you).
What I want to say is, “No. Damnit!”
When we were first married, my wife gave me a set of ivory chopsticks with an etching on each, like scrimshaw on a whale’s tooth, of a Chinese girl wearing a qipao, which is a traditional Chinese dress. They came in a rectangular bamboo box with a lid that slides open lengthwise. These became very special to me and are still the ones that I mainly use when we’re at home.
The first known set of chopsticks were made of bronze and found in a tomb in Henan province in China. Imagine the first set of chopsticks ever used. Somewhere around 5,000 years ago, someone had to get a piece of cooked meat out of a fire, or so I imagine, but he had burned his fingers too many times. Ow! Dang-it! Hey, hand me that stick over there. The first chopstick was probably just a pointed stick used for spearing the food. That seemed to work pretty well. After a while he looked at the stick. He weighed it in his hands. Hmm, he thought, I have an idea. He broke the stick into two equal pieces and with those two sticks he grabbed the piece of meat from the fire. That worked even better. Granted, through the epochs, those two sticks have evolved into quite a sophisticated tool. They are no longer just two random sticks. They are tapered and smoothed and weighted just right, a combination of round and square, cut to just the right length. Some are even beautifully etched with words or exotic pictures, like my ivory ones. Chopsticks can be made of anything, from the cheapo plastic and wooden ones that are used and thrown away in the millions, to bamboo, hardwood, stainless steel, ivory, brass. Some can be quite expensive. Coral. Jade. Gold. Sometimes, they repose in their own carved wooden boxes. Like mine.
There are subtle differences between the chopsticks used in China and the ones used in Japan. The Japanese versions are more rounded and tapered to a sharper point. Chinese chopsticks are usually thicker, with a round blunt tip. The rounded tip, it is thought, started with Confucius. He, apparently, was a vegetarian and he thought that a pointed end was reminiscent of a knife, which was used not only in war but used with meat. Or so the story goes. While we do have several pairs of Japanese-style chopsticks in our house, we use the Chinese style exclusively. After all, my wife is Chinese.
There are certain things that you should and should not do with your chopsticks. Certain etiquette that must be followed. One thing you should never do with your chopsticks is stand them in your bowl of rice. You’ll get dirty looks from around the table if you do that. Stuck in the bowl that way, they resemble incense sticks, which are burned at funerals and is taboo at the dinner table. Oh, and they are not drumsticks so don’t pound out a Ginger Baker drum solo on the table with them. And it’s kind of tacky to stick them in your mouth like walrus tusks. You wouldn’t stick two forks in your mouth like that. Well, I wouldn’t. If I did that at the dinner table when I was a kid, my mother would have flipped out. It is okay to spear a piece food with your chopstick if you can’t pick it up. Some people say it isn’t, but my wife tells me it is so that’s good enough for me. Chopsticks are not swords so don’t play Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with them. And it is considered rude to point them at someone. That’s like pointing your finger at someone and no one likes it when you point your finger at them. I have seen girls wearing chopsticks speared into their hair, holding their hair into a bun on their heads. That seems to be okay. I keep a pair in my car because, hey, you never know, I might need them some day.
Oh, also, maybe you shouldn’t refer to them as choppers.
In restaurants, sometimes, the chopsticks come in paper wrappers with directions printed on the wrapper. Little illustrations. Line drawings. The trick, the drawings show, is to hold the chopsticks higher up. About two-thirds up from the tip. Maybe slightly more. And they are right. Most beginners hold them way down close to the tip. Kind of like the way one might hold a pencil. It may seem wrong, but actually the higher up you hold your chopsticks, the more control you have.
I joke with my wife that I am better at using faai-jee than she is. “You’re doing it wrong,” I say. She doesn’t hold the sticks the way the pictures illustrate. I tease her that I learned the proper way. But she doesn’t care what the pictures show. She’ll smile and tell me that she has been managing just fine all her life, m-goi.
One time we were in a Chinese restaurant and when the waitress came up to our table she laid a pair of faai-jee onto a napkin beside my wife’s plate and a fork next to mine.
“Oh, excuse me,” I said. “Can I please get some chopsticks, too?”
The waitress didn’t say anything. She just looked at me. I waited a moment but she still did not say or do anything.
“You know, some choppers,” I said with a smart-aleck grin on my face. My wife kicked me under the table.
The waitress didn’t seem to understand. She looked at me like I was the Cheshire cat. So, I asked her for some faai-jee. She nodded and went away for a moment and then came back and laid a fork down beside my wife’s faai-jee.
“No,” I said. “Can I have some chopsticks?” I enunciated the words. I wasn’t trying to be rude. But I think that she thought I was. I could have been wrong but she gave me what I interpreted as a dirty look. Exasperated maybe. Frustrated? She went over to a nearby table that was not occupied and grabbed a pair of chopsticks from it. Then she came back to our table and set them down beside my fork. I did not say m-goi. Heck, I could have done that.
I probably shouldn’t admit this—I feel bad about it now—but I secretly took that pair of chopsticks home with me when we were done with dinner. They are Chinese style with a rounded tip and green in colour. I wiped them clean and slid them down into my sock. Those are the ones I keep in my car. But, shhh, don’t tell my wife.
How to cite: Beyl, Jeff. “Don’t Call em’ Choppers.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 28 Feb. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/02/28/chopsticks.
Jeff Beyl writes about nature, fly-fishing, music, geology, surfing, and the ocean. He has been published in several magazines such as Big Sky Journal, Outside Bozeman, Montana Fly-fishing, Idaho Magazine, Northwest Sportsman, Ocean Magazine, Snowy Egret Literary Journal. His book, A Conversation With the Earth, was published in 2020. He has travelled widely through Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. He is a jazz guitarist and photographer, scuba diver and fly-fisherman. He lives in Seattle with his wife. [All contributions by Jeff Beyl.]