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34 China The Economist April 25th 2020

2 The arrests will not help them maintain Table manners than usual and specially labelled or col-
calm. Neither will the controversy of the oured—are not to be placed in the mouth.
past few days related to the central govern- Safer ways to use They are common in other chopstick-using
ment’s latest assault—as many Hong Kon- societies, such as Japan and Taiwan, but
gers see it—on the “high degree of autono- chopsticks swapping from one set of chopsticks to an-

my” that the territory is supposed to enjoy. other is often considered a nuisance in
It began on April 14th when the central mainland China. It is rarely done except in
BEIJING
government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, Officials worry diners are sharing more very formal settings.
along with the Hong Kong and Macau Af- In Hubei, the province worst affected by
than Peking duck
fairs Office, which is based in Beijing, ac- covid-19, schools are giving online lessons
cused opposition legislators of abusing t dinner in China, a courteous host on how to be a good “communal-chop-
their oaths of office by using “malicious Auses her chopsticks to take the tastiest sticks pioneer”. A shopping mall in Shang-
filibustering” to “paralyse” the Legislative morsel from a communal dish and put it on hai is offering free parking to customers
Council. Their complaints relate to the the plate of an honoured guest. At a family who agree to use them at its restaurants.
work of a committee that decides on the meal, an elder does so for a child. Friends Staff use red ink to stamp the bills of com-
timing of debates about bills. It is presided do it for each other. And all help them- pliant customers, who redeem the perk on
over by Dennis Kwok, a democratic legisla- selves, taking bite-sized pieces again and their way out. The city government in Bei-
tor who is accused of wanting to block laws again from plates of food in the middle of jing is drafting new rules on “civilised” be-
that the Communist Party may use to tight- the table. So it has been for centuries. And haviour. They require using separate chop-
en its control in Hong Kong. One would al- then came covid-19. sticks for serving (the penalty, if any, for
low the jailing of people for insulting the In few other countries has the pan- violators has not been specified). State me-
national anthem. Another, not yet drafted, demic raised such painful questions about dia are also promoting the Western prac-
would outlaw “secession” and “subver- cherished cultural traditions as it has in tice of giving diners their own servings.
sion”—new concepts in local law. On April China with respect to dining customs. Sto- Concerns that infected saliva from a
15th Luo Huining, the head of the Liaison ries abound in Chinese media of people utensil can pass from one person to anoth-
Office, urged Hong Kong to get on with catching the coronavirus after sharing a er via a shared dish are at least a century
passing such a law. Indeed, Article 23 of the meal. There is no proof that the chopsticks old, says Q. Edward Wang, author of “Chop-
Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, were to blame. People who share a meal sticks: A Cultural and Culinary History”.
requires it to do so. tend to breathe on each other, too. But ex- Among the first in China to campaign for
But Article 22 of the Basic Law says that perts in China warn that transmission by dining-habit reform was a Malaysian-born
no central-government department may chopstick is possible. As restaurants doctor who saw hope in the “lazy Susan”—a
“interfere” in matters that Hong Kong has a reopen, local governments are urging din- rotating platform placed on a table so din-
right to administer on its own (the central ers to adjust what Health Times, a news- ers can spin the food to each other. He be-
government is supposed to run only the paper controlled by the Communist Party’s lieved the device would reduce the spread
territory’s foreign affairs and defence). mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, called their of disease because each dish would have its
When democrats accused the Liaison Of- “bad dining habits”. own serving spoon. Lazy Susans eventually
fice of meddling, it retorted that Article 22 The aim of this “tongue-defence war”, took off in China, but the spoons did not.
did not apply to it. This contradicted what as state media have dubbed the campaign, How different things might have been if
Hong Kong’s government had been saying is to change the way chopsticks are used. people had paid attention to Hu Yaobang.
for years. But the local authorities, after ap- Diners are encouraged to use designated In 1984 Mr Hu, then the Communist Party’s
pearing at first to stick to their guns, quick- communal ones for divvying up shared general secretary, suggested that, for the
ly fell in line with the new interpretation. food. These extra chopsticks—often longer sake of hygiene, they “eat Chinese food the
The central government may be mind- Western way” with knives and forks. “Pe-
ful of Legislative Council elections that are king has seen the future—and it lacks
due to be held in September. With the pro- chopsticks”, was the headline in the New
establishment camp holding just under York Times. But Mr Hu’s idea was never like-
two-thirds of seats, now may be an oppor- ly to stick. Hardliners despised him as a
tune moment to get the anthem and securi- Westernising liberal. Mr Hu’s death in 1989
ty bills passed. If the democrats can repeat sparked the Tiananmen Square upheaval,
the success they achieved last November in the crushing of which all but erased him
district-level elections, the government from official history books, along with his
may find its control in the Legislative radical idea. Recently state media have
Council considerably undermined. been drawing on antiquity to bolster their
It will be risky either way. In 2003, when case. Eating separate portions, they claim,
the government last tried to pass the secu- was the practice for 3,000 years until the
rity legislation mandated by Article 23, ob- Tang dynasty (618-907).
jectors staged a huge protest. This led to the While calling for a “dining-table revolu-
bill’s withdrawal and eventually the step- tion”, state media are careful to respect the
ping down of Hong Kong’s then leader, view of many Chinese that dish-sharing is
Tung Chee-hwa. But the government may a sign of intimacy. “Divide food, not love,” a
decide to ignore public opinion this time. common new slogan urges. In the capital, a
Democrats fear that the central govern- Peking-duck restaurant offers serving
ment may lean on Hong Kong to bar some chopsticks to any guest who asks for them.
of them even from running in September. But a waitress says there are few requests.
The Liaison Office’s accusation that filibus- In a social-media poll of about 210,000 net-
tering legislators are violating their oaths izens, 27% said they would use serving
(a sackable offence) already suggests that utensils, but 30% said they would not, be-
the pressure is growing. 7 Maintaining the Peking order cause it was “too much trouble”. 7