China promotes safer hotpot dining through 'serving chopsticks'

Customers don aprons so they won't be splattered as they dip raw meat, seafood, vegetables and noodles into a cauldron of simmering broth. They stow their coats and bags in lockers to shield them from the lingering aromas of fat and spice. Wait staff dole out hair ties for women and plastic covers for phones within spitting distance of the pot.

But in post-coronavirus China, there's a new safeguard at hot-pot restaurants: public chopsticks, intended only for transferring morsels from the pot onto an individual's plate.

"Some people are curious and accept it, but other people say it's just not their habit to use serving chopsticks," said Han Mingjia as she waited tables at a branch of Dian Tai Xiang Hot Pot on Chengdu's "Hot Pot Street" on a recent Friday night.

"It's a bit difficult for people to use serving chopsticks when they're eating hot pot compared with other food because when you're eating with friends, you're so happy that you just forget," she said.

The idea of serving chopsticks is a radical change from China's usual practice of family-style eating, where people don't order individual meals but instead get numerous dishes to share, thinking nothing of putting their personal chopsticks in the communal plate and then in their mouth and then back into the plate.

Chinese kids grow up learning rules about chopsticks: Don't wave them around or point them at others, don't use them to stab your food, don't suck on them or click them together noisily, and never, ever leave them sticking up out of your rice bowl - that's reminiscent of offerings to the dead. But none of the rules concerns double-dipping.

Now, the coronavirus outbreak has injected new momentum into the stop-start campaign to change the practice of sharing food - an integral part of Chinese culture and an expression of closeness and affection.

Zhang Wenhong, an infectious-diseases expert in Shanghai, has suggested that "separate dining" should become the "new normal." Describing the "scariest" custom from a public health perspective earlier this year, Zhang said it was people serving food with their own chopsticks.

"What you see is food and wine, but all I see are all viruses and bacteria," he said at the opening of a food festival in Shanghai in April.

Some organizations are promoting Nov. 11 - a date that, when written in numerals, looks like two pairs of chopsticks - as a "Day for Civilized Dining."

But it's a tough sell.

"It's a Chinese tradition and a custom that has been around for thousands of years, so it's difficult to change it," said Li Yibing, a food blogger in Chengdu who is involved in the public chopstick campaign.

Chinese people began using chopsticks to share food in about the 12th century when they began using tables, said Q. Edward Wang, a history professor at Rowan University in New Jersey and the author of a book about chopsticks. Previously, people would hold their own bowls to eat, but with the common use of tables, people began laying out dishes to share.

"In my opinion, it's just like any other custom. It takes time to form. And once it's formed, it's very difficult to change," he said.

Many Chinese complain that using serving utensils would create distance between themselves and their friends or family members. Others say it is awkward to ask for serving chopsticks because it implies they think their dining companions are germ-infested.

That's why the campaign in Chengdu, in the modern home of hot pot in Sichuan province, centers on the idea that you can show you care by not transmitting germs, rather than by feeding each other.

The Chengdu Catering Industry Association has launched a campaign called "Use Public Chopsticks With People You Like" to try to overcome the cultural misgivings.

"We want to tell people that it doesn't mean that you don't care about others, that it means that you really care about them and their health and that's why you're are doing this," said Qu Wenjie, a food blogger who, along with Li, has joined local authorities in proselytizing for public chopsticks.

Just as hot-pot restaurants promote the quality of their meat or tout their hygiene practices, serving chopsticks could become another marker of high standards, she said.

Hot pot is perhaps the most communal of shared foods. Diners throw their dinner into a vat of pork fat awash with spicy chilies and numbing peppercorns, and lean in with their chopsticks to stir their food. When it's done, they fish it out and gobble it down.

In fact, the shared experience is part of the joy of hot pot, said Tang Yi, the founder of Dian Tai Xiang. "Hot pot promotes inclusiveness. You can cook everything from all parts of China in one pot," he said over a bubbling tub. "There is something for everyone."

But the inclusiveness could extend to unwanted areas.

Li Liangping, director of the gastroenterology department at Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital in Chengdu, said that using serving utensils reduced the risk of spreading hepatitis A and E, typhoid fever and dysentery, which can all be transmitted through saliva.

"Infectious-disease prevention is more important than treatment. Using public chopsticks and sharing meals will reduce the chance of disease transmission," Li told Sichuan Online.

As the coronavirus epidemic took hold in China early this year, communal eating drew closer scrutiny.

One factor in the virus's rapid spread through Wuhan was a huge potluck meal on Jan. 18, where 40,000 families gathered to dip their chopsticks into communal banquet plates and which was found to be the source of an outbreak.

Hot pot quickly fell out of favor, particularly in Hong Kong, where 11 of the 19 members of an extended family who celebrated the Lunar New Year together over hot pot contracted the disease.

As restaurants have reopened, health authorities have seized the opportunity to change habits. The Communist Party-controlled media, usually aghast at any talk of groundswell change, has been promoting the need for a "table revolution" in China, calling serving utensils a kind of "vaccine" against coronavirus.

But the campaign is most advanced here in Chengdu.

At huge screens in shopping malls and on Jumbotrons on buildings' exteriors, signs promote "civilized dining." Restaurant chains and hotels have gotten in on the act - under threat of being summoned for a chat with the authorities if they don't - with servers guiding people to make the switch.

But customers? Not so much.

Few diners crowded around hot-pot tables with their friends or workmates at the Dian Tai Xiang branch on Hot Pot Street were bothering with the serving chopsticks. As two Washington Post reporters asked puzzled restaurant patrons about the concept, a waiter rushed over to place some serving chopsticks on the table.

"I don't think it's necessary," said Yuan Rui, who is 24 and works in a hotel, as she shared hot pot with her friend. Using serving chopsticks would seem excessively polite, she said. "You know the Chinese word 'jianwai'? It means 'not willing to be close to each other.' "

Liu Quan, an architect who was dipping pig innards into hot oil with a friend, said the concept of serving chopsticks was a strange one for Chinese people.

Asked if he would use them at home, he was incredulous: "Of course I wouldn't use them with my family. I don't even use them with my friends!"

A survey by the state-run Jiangsu News found that more people in the province - 64,000 - said that using serving chopsticks was annoying than said they would try it (57,000).

Advocates like Qu and Li are not particularly optimistic that they will be able to effect change - especially not with hot pot. As Li put it: "When people eat hot pot they get excited, so they talk and communicate and are more free."