Chopstick etiquette

[anna_wing]

I am not from China and have never been there, so I cannot speak to their dining practices. However, when I was being brought up, the mannerly way to take food from a communal dish with chopsticks, in the absence of a serving spoon or serving chopsticks, was to turn your chopsticks around and use the other end, i.e., the end facing you, to serve yourself, and then eat with the regular end. If you were fussy, you could use a bit of paper tissue (which all ladies beyond a certain age carried with them at all times anyway in thir black leather handbags) to wipe them afterwards.

It is perfectly straightforward and logical, and that is how one does it when one was not raised by bears.