As the rapidly development of society and economy, you can find international food wherever you go. Knives and forks from other areas make various westerns tableware no longer mysterious. However, as an integrated part of intercultural communication, the differences of diet culture not only are differences in appearance, but also have more important connotations in exploration and using. As time goes on, western and China’s diet culture is gradually become more and more distinctive. And the differences in characteristics in culture are quite charming.

This article focuses on analyzing the differences between China’s and western diet culture from tableware, which helps people to realize the charm of China’s and western food culture. Thus, people could understand the significance of diet culture deeply. At the same time, the study of intercultural communication in this area, at present, is lack of deep research in diet culture differences. Therefore, the study on diet cultural differences can help us to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding in cultural communications in the future, and also to promote communication with different food culture.

II. Chinese and Western Tableware

2.1 The Feature of Chinese Tableware

China is an ancient country with a civilization of five thousand years and vivid culture. In fact, chopsticks culture has immortal character and unique charm like flowers. It is said that “food is the paramount necessity of the people”. Chinese people are inseparable with chopsticks in three meals every day. China’s chopsticks culture has a long history.

Chopsticks, be described as the quintessence of China, is both lightweight and flexible. It is also a kind of unique tableware in the world and is regarded as “eastern civilization” by westerners. The history of chopsticks could date back to the Shang Dynasty. According to Shiji, it is said: “Ivory chopsticks was started to use in the period of Zhou”(Taylor 121), Zhou was the last monarch of Shang Dynasty, basing on this, Chinese has used the chopsticks for at least three thousand years. The pre-Qin period called chopsticks the “embrace”, Qin and Han Dynasties called it “Zhu”. Because the ancients is fairly sensitive about the taboo, and “chopsticks”and “live” are homonym, add to this, “live” means “stopping”, the meaning is not auspicious, as a result, we call it “chopsticks” which is anti-its meaning. This is the origin of the name of chopsticks.

Chinese people eat food with chopsticks, which contains a rich cultural heritage. From the shape itself, the chopsticks’ circle below represents hemispherical dome and forever. On the structure, pairs of chopsticks represent harmonious and no separated life. When the southern area built a new house, the chopsticks will be thrown out of the window, and the sound of its landing is sharp. It means that  things will be smooth in the next year.  Meanwhile, it is said to mean that flowers bloomed when chopsticks

land.

2.2 The Feature of Western Tableware

Tableware is a symbol of social progress and a symbol of humanity from barbarism to civilization. However, in the process of rapid development of western civilization, you can see that the developmental history of the western tableware is shorter than the east, the western tableware started later and progressed slowly.

Westerners use varieties of tableware, which is also affected by the outcome of the “inpidual-oriented” concept. Among them, the most typical tableware is knife and fork. Knife and fork are dining tools with long history in the west, they shared meals functions, almost inseparable. Holding a fork in one hand and a knife in another one, use knife cut food, then use fork send food to mouth, that has already become the common sense of people’s diet habits.