When we go out to eat, the waiter sometimes equips a pair of public chopsticks or a public spoon when serving a certain dish. The existence of public chopsticks and public spoons should be said to be a special scenery line in the Chinese cultural circle.
This time let’s talk about public chopsticks and spoons. When it comes to public chopsticks and spoons, we have to mention sharing meals and dividing meals first.
The common meal system has not existed since ancient times in our country.
As is known to all, At present, our Chinese dining table culture is a common meal system. This is very different from western countries and Japan, where the culture of separate meals is popular. But many people may not know: China has not always had a common meal system since ancient times. China used to have a common meal system, and its history is still very long. Until the Song Dynasty, it was still a common meal system-today we have become accustomed to a common meal culture like breathing, with a history of only about 1,000 years.
As early as the Qin and Han Dynasties, The dinner did not have today’s tables and chairs, Everyone sat on the floor, Each person is equipped with a tableware set in front of him. This set of tableware is called: Food case. Everyone has one set, Each eats his own food. The food case is the symbol of the culture of dividing meals. It appeared in many ancient Chinese paintings. However, the southward movement of the northern ethnic minorities brought a completely different home culture to the Han nationality in the Central Plains: stools and chairs. These [new furniture] not only impacted the traditional furniture composition of the Han nationality in the Central Plains, but also spread to other fields, one of which was the catering custom.
Dunhuang frescoes in the Tang Dynasty < < Gong Le Tu > > vividly depict such a dinner scene: more than a dozen ladies-in-waiting sit around one place, each with a bowl in front of him, and there is a large basin in the picture. A ladies-in-waiting hand holds a long spoon to distribute the food in the large basin to everyone. This is the germination of the common meal culture.
However, due to the strict social hierarchy and other factors in China, the vitality of the meal-sharing culture is very strong: the higher the social hierarchy, the more meal-sharing, and the nobles in the imperial palace insisted on meal-sharing until the end of the Song Dynasty. However, in the Yuan Dynasty under Mongolian rule after the death of the Song Dynasty, meal-sharing completely ceased to exist and changed into today’s meal-sharing culture.
The culture of sharing meals is deeply rooted.
The culture of sharing meals in China is deeply rooted, It’s hard to shake. But in 2003, a serious public health incident that shocked the world occurred in China: SARS has promoted the awareness of using public chopsticks and spoons in mainland China, Hong Kong, even Singapore and other countries and regions affected by Chinese culture. Especially in Hong Kong, the theme publicity campaign of “public chopsticks and public soup, safety and hygiene” launched by the Hong Kong Medical Association after SARS has rapidly increased the usage rate of public chopsticks and spoons from 46% in 2003 to 65% in 2005.
However, in mainland China, The situation is more complicated. Although in 2003, under the deterrent of SARS, the awareness of the use of public chopsticks and public spoons in China’s high-end hotels and restaurants suddenly increased and became popular for a while, but because it was not mandatory and there was no corresponding punishment, under the strong cultural inertia, the awareness of public chopsticks and public spoons slowly faded down from 2005.
How to weigh emotion and health?
On the one hand, it is the emotional communication projected by Chinese traditional culture on the habit of sharing meals. It is an important means to close the relationship between people in social occasions. It is still unthinkable for most people to propose to use public chopsticks at meals, because it means deliberately alienating others and may even be regarded as a kind of [wary]: you mean what, suspect me of my illness, right!
On the other hand, with the improvement of the economic situation, the Chinese people’s awareness of health and hygiene is also increasing day by day, and more and more people realize the rationality of dividing meals or serving chopsticks and spoons.
In addition to the earliest SARS, in recent years, reports of the spread of Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis caused by eating together have also appeared frequently in the media, sometimes even sensational, which makes some people who are especially hygienic feel great pressure and even feel anxious whenever they face dinner parties.
How can the dilemma between culture and health be broken?
Is the meal sharing system reliable? Let’s look at how the disease spreads first.
To solve this problem, we need to first look at the risk of spreading diseases caused by traditional eating habits.
This involves the transmission route of infectious diseases. According to the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the main transmission routes of infectious diseases are: air transmission, water and food transmission, contact transmission, etc.
Airborne transmission
SARS is a typical airborne infectious disease.
However, as long as one has basic logical thinking, it is not difficult to find that SARS promoted the enhancement of the awareness of public chopsticks and spoons in China at that time, which was somewhat irrelevant in humor and interest-this belongs to the widespread anxiety and panic caused by typical virulent infectious diseases, and often leads to group blind behavior.
Since SARS is spread through the air, it is a risk to get together, whether you are having dinner, playing cards or talking about love.
Therefore, the key to preventing SARS is to go to less public places and wear masks when going out.
Water and food transmission
Many diseases are channeled through this channel, such as cholera, salmonellosis, botulinum poisoning, diarrhea caused by norovirus or rotavirus, etc.
The fundamental problem with this kind of disease is that the water and food sources themselves are contaminated by pathogens. As long as you eat the contaminated dish during the dinner, you will be shot whether you eat together or separately.
Contact propagation
Dinner without public chopsticks and spoons belongs to indirect contact transmission in this category.
In theory, water and food-borne diseases certainly have the possibility of indirect transmission, but in fact there is a condition: susceptible people need to contact excreta or secretions from the source of infection.
So how should this risk be understood at dinner?