Purple Rail Fence

In honor of National Chopstick Day, here are a few fun chopstick facts:

The use of chopsticks involves more than thirty joints and fifty muscles in the fingers, wrist, arm and shoulder. (Whew! No wonder it’s so hard to learn!)

The Chinese use more than 45 billion disposable chopsticks every year, emptying forests and clogging landfills.

Almost one third of the world uses chopsticks every day, about as many as use a knife and fork. (Does this mean a third of us only use spoons?)

Chopsticks were developed between 3000 and 5000 years ago. Anthropologists suspect they were originally long sticks used for stirring fires and skewering food, not for transferring it to peoples’ mouths.

If you visit China or Vietnam, you’ll see long wooden chopsticks with rounded or blunt ends. In Japan, you’re more apt to use shorter, pointier wooden sticks. Koreans use shorter, blunt sticks made of plastic, metal or wood.