At a dinner recently, I was told by a Korean friend of mine that the now famous Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk recently claimed that the Korean metal chopsticks (which I find admittedly relatively hard to use in grabbing greasy noodles and other slippery food items) have developed the dexterity of the Korean people to such a high extent that it allows them to be better at the detailed work of science at a microscopic level.
Ah yes, I found Hwang’s quote online here :
Their secret weapon? A mastery of wielding steel chopsticks. “This work can be done much better in Oriental hands,” he says. “We can pick up very slippery corn or rice with the steel chopsticks.”
It has been mentioned many other places as well, including a Wired news article. Also, it apparently isn’t just manual dexterity, it is our very mental capacity for concentration which is at stake here in chopstick use:
To use chopsticks, the use of some 30 different joints and 50 muscles is required. The use of chopsticks thus stimulates the cerebrum far more actively than does the use of a fork. The everyday practice of using chopsticks is said to enable people to improve vital developmental functions, such as muscle control, coordination for handling small objects, and mental concentration. It is a well-known fact that practicing certain hand movements during early childhood, such as playing with string or molding clay, are helpful for developing the brain. Some have conjectured that the reason Korea was able to become a global leader in semiconductors, despite a late start of some 30 years, was because of its people’s manual dexterity, which is especially well suited for delicate work. Moreover, they claim that such manual dexterity is a product of Korea’s chopsticks-user culture. A similar interpretation is used to explain the exceptional success of Korean athletes in such sports as golf and archery.
When I did Kyûdô archery in Japan, I was told that the fact I came from Norway, which is made up of a “hunting and gathering people,” contributed to the speed of my improvement in skill. If only we used metal chopsticks in our hunting villages along the fjords.
Haha! It reminds me of a story of Miyamoto Musashi, being able to catch a fly with his chopsticks!
Wow! Ya, and Daniel in the Movie Karate Kid had to learn to do the same from his Okinawan teacher Miyagi-san. If an Italian American can do it, maybe I can learn too!
yeah…good one. and africans are fast runners because of the lions that chase them, and indians are good at numbers because they have long had to deal with a polytheistic faith…give me a break. this sort of culturally biased lunacy is what perpetuates sterotypes and allows people to igore that fact that more diversity exsits within human populations than between them.