Chinese food is usually communal and not individually served. So, there needs to be two pairs of chopsticks. Which pair to use? Well, the steel pair is for your personal use, ie put food into your mouth. The black pair it to take food from the main plates to your own plate or bowl
Since chopsticks are so often used in many dishes, the correct usage is essential! The most common "rules" of chopstick usage are as follows:
- Always grab chopsticks in the middle, make sure the ends are even.
- Chopsticks are held in the right hand only, even for left-handed people.
- Chopsticks are not used to move bowls or plates.
- Chopsticks are not used to toy with one's food or dishes in common.
- When not in use, chopsticks must always be placed neatly on the table, both chopsticks lying tidily next to each other at both ends. Failure to do so is evocative of the way the dead would be placed in a coffin before a funeral.
- Treat chopsticks as an extension of your fingers and do not point at other people or wave themaround.
- Do not suck the ends of chopsticks.
- Do not use chopsticks to move dishes.
- Do not pierce food with chopsticks; they are not forks.
- Do not point chopsticks at another person-this is considered an insult.
- Do not bang chopsticks like you're beating on a drum, this implies that you're a beggar.
- Do not stick chopsticks vertically in a bowl of rice, this implies that this is food for the dead.
