Chopsticks: Its Mysterious Name Change in China

December19, 2017 |

Chopsticks are eating utensils used for thousand of years by the people of the Orient. From ancient time up to the present, “tu” or “chu” were the only words used for chopsticks by the people of Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China and Vietnam. But around 600 years ago in the Chinese Ming Dynasty, they had changed the name to “kuai-zi”. There are various explanations on the reasons behind this change, but none is particularly persuasive. My personal opinion is that it’s related to the first emperor of Ming, Chu Yuan Chang. The first reason, the name “Chu” has a similar pronunciation to “tu”, in order to avoid disrespect to the emperor, the name of chopsticks was changed. The second reason, since Chu Yuan Chang was a Muslim and regarded pig as an unclean animal, and the word “tu” is a homonym for both chopsticks and pigs, therefore the name of chopsticks was changed. But when the Muslims came into power, they had been relentless in the massacre of the people, so how come they cared about such a small thing as changing the name of the chopsticks?

Additionally, there are two other evidences. During the Qing dynasty (the dynasty that replaced the Ming), in their official Kangxi Dictionary, only the word “tu” had been used, and not the “Kuai-zi”. The other one is that of the famous novel from the Ming dynasty, “Si-yu-ji” (Journey to the West). There was no description concerning the consuming of pork. Also, its notorious pig character was euphemised or beautified as a commander from heaven.

“Kuai-zi” was a new name for chopsticks in China which was never heard before. Also, it’s renaming was ridiculous in that it reflected whoever had ordered the renaming was quite not familiar with Chinese tradition. After the renaming, people were silent and obedient under the powerful new ruler. Hundreds of years passed and then no one had remembered what happened before.

The history between China and the neighboring Islamic countries were always in hostile. Never-ending wars had changed their border lines and relocated their people. Even now Muslims are everywhere in China and they kept to their own religion and tradition, and rarely mingled with the Chinese. They despise each other's culture and tradition even up to present.

Although chopsticks are not a part of culture common to all the Austronesian people, it's still an important symbolical eating utensils for the homeland of all Austronesian people, Taiwan, and neighboring countries as Japan, Korea and Vietnam. But why not for the other part of Oceania? Chopsticks are connected strictly with rice-eating cultures, and the ancestors of Hawaiian and Maori had left Taiwan much earlier than 5,000 years ago, which was also the period of the earliest archaeological findings on rice.

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