Hand Fans & Chopsticks

Hi, lads! Sup? Hope all good. K bye^^

Kidding :3 Again as ma friends r calling it a “short book”. So take these 2 min to read it. Today I want to tell u a bit about Asia. Firstly, thanks to my friend for bringing me these lovely Korean chopsticks and a hand fan.

Did u know that actually the first hand fans were created back in 2nd century BCE in China? They were made out of paper and during the Song Dynasty (960 – 1279) famous painters would decorate them.

A bit more of a history, during the stated period of time, the government of China issued the first paper money, so we need to thank them but who cares now we use cards (at least I do, for already 2 years I rarely use cash and need to admit | like it, but I love to collect money from different countries and I do have Chinese yuan). But back to the hand fans, later instead of painting they also were decorated with poems and four-word idioms. So to conclude, in China hand fans had different shapes like a leaf, oval or a half-moon and they were made out of silk, bamboo or feathers. And now let’s move to Japanese fans^^ Here the folding fans were invented. An interesting fact is that the number of strips of wood within the fan would differ according to the owner’s rank. Geisha used and still the one that continues to live in Kyoto use folding fans during the dances. Would u like to read about Geisha culture, let me know))) Another fact is that fans were used during the war in order to send signals. Now let’s talk about chopsticks. As you might guess everything started in China back in 1200 B.C., and by A.D. 500 the traditions to eat with the use of this super cool sticks swept the Asian continent from Vietnam to Japan. During the discovery of Yin’s ruins, archaeologists found the earliest examples of Chinese writing as well as the first known chopsticks - bronze sets. Those early chopsticks were mainly used for cooking instead of eating, cause it was really easy to work with boiled water or hot oil with the use of those.

Interesting that they actually started eating with them after the boom of population, when they needed to cut portions of food. So because the food was served bite-sized there was no need to use knives anymore. According to Confucius sharp utensils remind people of violence and war. Even though chopsticks are used all around Asia, they still have some differences. Chinese chopsticks featured a blunt rather than pointed end; Japanese - were 8 inches long for men & 7 for women. Japanese was the first one (1878) who started creating the now-ubiquitous disposable set. The type of wood would differ according to the rank of the person – poor people would eat with regular bamboo chopsticks, wealthy with ivory, jade or coral, and the most privileged used silver sets. According to the beliefs, silver chopsticks would corrode and turn black if the food was poisoned.

That’s it for today^^ Hope you found it interesting and in case u want to know about Asia, even more, let me know!

Don’t forget we are the scriptwriters of our life!

xoxo,

LuNa*