This was on discovery channel, incidentally, when I chanced upon your question.\n\nIn the past as cavemen, the Chinese people had discovered rice for quite a while, using various ways to cook rice or meat, such as hollow bamboo, mud, and leaves.\nWhen it was hot, they probably used sticks: two sticks like a pair of tongs to hold the packet or the bamboo together.\nSlowly, it evolved from sticks, to wood, and as the Chinese flourished into a civilisation, it was decorated with laquer, made from jade, carved from Ivory, and it's uses increased from just being a tool to pick up food, to being used in quick cooking like stir-frying, to picking scraps of food off the plates, to even cutting chunks of food at the table or in the wok through a skillful manipulation of the fingers and wrists.\nThis ubiquitous tool spread to Korea, Japan and to many parts of Asia where the Chinese migrated, and brought their culture along with them.