Chopsticks have become a quintessential part of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean culinary experience across the globe, with more than one fifth of the world’s population using them daily to eat.

Dr. Wang’s vibrant, original account of the history of chopsticks based on his book, Chopsticks: A Cultural and Culinary History, charts their evolution from a simple eating implement in ancient times to their status as a much more complex, cultural symbol today. The book, which opens with the first recorded use of chopsticks during the Neolithic, surveys their use in China before exploring their transmission in the 5th Century A.D. to other parts of Asia, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and Mongolia.

Calling upon a striking selection of artwork, Dr. Wang illustrates how chopstick use has influenced Asian cuisine, and how, in turn, the cuisine continues to influence chopstick use both in Asia and across the globe.

Biography
Dr. Wang was educated in China and the US and has taught at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, for 30 years. His research and teaching focus on the study of historiography (how history is written) and the cultural and intellectual history of Asia. He has published a number of works on Chinese cultural and intellectual history, comparative historiography, historical theory and food history. The most recent of his many publications in English is Chopsticks: A Cultural and Culinary History (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which won Choice’s “Outstanding Academic Title” and also appeared in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

In 2007, he received the Changjiang Scholar Professorship at Peking University, which he still holds. A board member of the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography since 2005, Wang is also editor of Chinese Studies in History (Taylor & Francis), a journal devoted to publishing works by Chinese historians for English readers, and of Historiography: Critical Readings in four volumes (Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2020).