筷子是中餐桌上最有特色的用餐工具。

几千年来我们中国人一直视筷子为一种可以将饭从碗中逐口送人口中的最简单同时也是最有效的工具。早在周朝时期,筷子便被人们用来夹取荤、蔬菜,而米饭在那时则用手来取食这一时期的筷子叫做“箸”,与“住”字谐音。可这个“住”字在船上被视为禁忌语,因为船是不可以在航行途中打住不前的,人们因而改“箸”字为“筷”字,与“快”字谐音。此后,人们在“筷”字后又添加了后缀词“子”。中国许多厨房用品的名称都带有后缀词“子”,如“杯子”、“盆子”、“锅子”“桌子”等等。

Chopsticks, or kuaizi, are the most distinctive eating tool on the Chinese dining table.

For thousands of years we Chinese have always regarded chopsticks the simplest possible and the most efficient tool for

transporting bite-sized morsels of food from a bowl to the mouth. As early as in the Zhou Dynasty, chopsticks were used for picking up meat and vegetables, while hands were used for rice.

The Chinese term for chopsticks during this period was zhu, a character whose sound was homonymous with another word meaning "to stop". Since this character was taboo on ships, which were not supposed to stop en route, it was changed to kuai, a word homonymous with another word meaning "quick". Then, another character zi was added as a sort of suffix, as occurs with the names of many common objects in the kitchen, such as beizi (cup), panzi (plate), guozi (pot), zhuozi (table), etc.

掌握好筷子这件与生存有关的工具需要手指的熟练协调,而用好筷子则可以给孩子一次机会,向父母亲表明,自己已无需再依赖汤匙进食,可以同常人一样独立取食了。

全国各地的筷子大小基本一样,而所用材料的种类则各有不同,所选材料有竹子、木材、漆器、玉石、象牙、塑料、铝、银、金等。特长的竹筷通常用于厨房中。过去人们用嵌有银器的木筷来测试是否有人在餐中下毒,因为银器碰到一些有毒物品会起变色反应。

我们中国人使用筷子的方法很有艺术性,各人有各人的方法，就好像签名一样,不尽一致。中国人一般都能随心所欲地用筷子夹起一粒米饭、一粒豌豆、一只滑溜溜的蘑菇或海参。有些人还能夹起一整块易碎的豆腐。

The mastery of this survival tool requires a skillful coordination of fingers, which gives a child an opportunity to prove to his or her parents that he or she is no longer dependent on the spoon, and can reach out for his or her own food like everyone else.

Chopsticks, which are roughly uniform in size throughout China, can be made of a variety of materials, including bamboo,

wood, lacquer, jade, ivory, plastic, aluminum, silver and gold. Special long bamboo chopsticks are generally used in the kitchen. In the past, wooden chopsticks inlaid with silver thread were used to test whether poison was put in a meal, since silver reacts to a number of poisonous substances by changing its color.

The way we Chinese handle our chopsticks is quite artistic and varied from person to person like one's signature. An average Chinese can very easily pick up a single tiny grain of rice, or a tiny piece of peas, or a slippery button mushroom or sea cucumber. Some people are able to pick up a piece of bean curd that crumbles easily.