"I'll tell you what I like about Chinese people. They're hanging in there with the chopsticks,aren't they? You know they've seen the fork. They're staying with the sticks." Jerry Seinfeld

My boss at the Language school where I teach asked me "have you had the opportunity to use chopsticks yet?" He knows I've been here for 8 months never mind that I've been to China too and he should have known that I've had plenty of opportuniy. It's perhaps illustrative of a big gap out there. I suppose it's likely that someone his age has never used a knife and fork since this is very rare here. A fork on it's own for pasta is very common and a western style spoon is always used for curry but a knife and fork would probably only be used for steak.

That's because the Japanese surely have the best design for chopsticks in the world. Unlike the Chinese ones, they are fine at the ends and so can easily be used for cutting like a knife or for spearing like a fork. Unlike the Korean ones they taper to a substantial handle and aren't too fiddly.