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  3. According to historical evidence, the Chinese have used chopsticks since the time of the Shang Dynasty(ca 1766-1066 BCE). The fi

According to historical evidence, the Chinese have used chopsticks since the time of the Shang Dynasty(ca 1766-1066 BCE). The fi

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问题     According to historical evidence, the Chinese have used chopsticks since the time of the Shang Dynasty(ca 1766-1066 BCE). The first sticks used as eating utensils were twigs that the hungriest eaters used to scoop food into their mouths. This invention obviously brought added convenience to eating as the sticks made it easier to handle steaming hot food. The same ingenious idea was undoubtedly conceived in other parts of the world as well, but evidence shows that elsewhere spoon-like utensils eventually achieved greater popularity at the expense of chopsticks.
    The reason why chopsticks became a fixture of the Chinese table setting may be the fact that local food is often chopped up into small pieces and only rapidly heated, which makes it especially suitable for chopsticks. Another more philosophical explanation for the development is that the revered philosopher and vegetarian Kong Zi, or Confucius, would have had antipathies towards handling knives at the dinner table. He considered using knives to tear at food to be a show of barbarism. According to this theory then, the fact that chopsticks became the main eating utensils is evidence that civilized behavior gradually replaced a culture marked by brutish knife toting. Whatever the truth may be, the use of chopsticks spread from China to Korea and Japan around the year 500. And the populations of these three nations have tightly held on to their chopsticks ever since.
    Chopsticks are mainly made out of wood or bamboo, but some are also made from jade, ivory, silver, steel and nowadays even plastic. Sticks made from bamboo have the advantage of being cheap and their surface is naturally slightly coarse, which makes it easier to balance food on them. On the other hand, these materials tend to warp and break quite easily in use, which makes a strong case for favoring chopsticks made of metal, except for the fact that they are very slippery and tend to clank against the teeth quite annoyingly.
    Legend has it that Chinese emperors used to prefer silver chopsticks because the material reacted to poisons that assassins put in food by turning black.
    Food etiquette in China is significantly more tolerant than in Japan or Korea. The Chinese consider it to be completely polite to raise a bowl to one’s lips, at least in one’s home, and scoop food over the rim into the mouth with the help of chopsticks. The Chinese prefer to cook their rice quite sticky, so it is not as difficult as one might think to eat it with chopsticks. Noodle soup is also another delicacy that is eaten, true to Chinese style, quite flexibly but noisily with chopsticks. The only absolute taboo regarding chopsticks is that they should never be left to stand in the middle of a heap of rice in a bowl as this evokes food offerings and incense sticks.
    Disposable chopsticks were invented at the end of the 19th century, and they soon became a hit product throughout Asia. Today, the fad for using disposable chopsticks has become a significant environmental problem, as about 45 billion pairs of them are used annually in China alone. Producing such a huge amount of chopsticks requires 1.7 million cubic meters of wood. Last year, the central government added a five percent tax to disposable chopsticks to help curb waste.
Japanese may most probably consider erecting chopsticks in the middle of a heap of rice in a bowl
选项 A、sacred.
B、ominous.
C、uncivilized.
D、disrespectful.
答案B
解析 根据第5段首句可知该段末句提到的中国的禁忌在日本也同样被视为禁忌，该句提到的offerings“祭品”和incense“(供神所焚烧的)香”让人联想到“死人”，这样就可以推断将筷子插在一碗饭的中间是“不吉利的”，因此本题应选B。
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