Chopsticks

For my recent birthday, my sister bought me chopsticks. They are probably illegal. They are certainly very beautiful: ivory, long, elegant, with silver tips and banding, and a silver linking chain. The on dit is that in more interesting times, hosts gave their guests silver chopsticks to demonstrate there were no poisons in the food. Or at any rate, no poisons that would turn the silver black.

There are Chinese hallmarks I can't read. I'd guess the chopsticks were made some time in the last 150 years, but can't be more precise. A hunch would place it about 1910. I'd love to know.

We went to the local Chinese restaurant tonight. Even on a Thursday, Mike's is full. The food's not bad - when Ziang Zemin visited England a few years back, he landed at Stansted and (allegedly) had a takeaway brought to him and his entire entourage from Mike's.

The staff are attentive and friendly. They recognise regular customers, which of course flatters us. Mike, a long time from Hong Kong, suave, diamond stud in his ear, moves among us as easily as a pike through reeds. Tonight, there are maybe 50 covers, of all ages, all white, all casually dressed; they have local accents and don't look rich or posh or intellectual. And all are using chopsticks. We've been coming to this restaurant since it opened. Before Mike bought it about 10 years ago, it was much more pretentious than it is now. And how times have changed. 20 years ago, 10 even, and at least half the clientele insisted on western cutlery. Tonight, the under-10s and the grannies are all using chopsticks expertly, unselfconsciously. This is a minor cause for celebration.

I was tempted to take the fancy chopsticks along to ask Mike to decipher the hallmarks, but glad I hadn't - he was too busy and the lighting was anyway too poor. Mike and his staff are the only people I know who can read Chinese (whatever Chinese language this is) so they're the only ones who can tell me it reads: 'Golden Carp Restaurant: Thieves Will Die a Lingering Death'. When we bought an umbrella stand from him a while back, he started to translate for us the poem embossed on it, which seemed to be exhortatory of courage and altruism - then stopped, saying it was all too difficult: each word in the poem had so much cultural baggage that an English word couldn't represent it, there was a whole history there. How he'd learned this at school, but couldn't put it into English though it was very beautiful... I wanted to hear more about all this but as usual he's in demand, his cellphone earpiece hanging over the ear that doesn't have a diamond: deft, very busy.

I'm astonished not to find anything on Google Image. Perhaps if I spoke Mandarin... if I were techno-savvy, I'd be able to post a photograph here. As it is, you'll have to imagine them. Remember how ivory is coveted for its gem-like purity of colour and translucence, as well as for ease of working. How silver is malleable, forgiving, and how soft its brightness. And think why anyone would want to chain a pair of chopsticks together. Aren't they interchangeable? Is someone going to steal or lose one and not the other? Can't the staff count?