Disposable wooden chopsticks, the eating implements of choice, will face a 5 per cent consumption tax from April 1, the Finance Ministry said yesterday. The aim is to curb the plunder of timber resources and protect the environment.

A tax of 10 per cent will also be levied on yachts, golf balls and golf clubs, while luxury watches and large cars will be slugged by 20 per cent. However, tax on skincare and haircare products will be abolished.

China makes 15 billion pairs of throwaway chopsticks a year, consuming some 2 million cubic metres (71 million cubic ft) of wood, equivalent to ten million trees, which would occupy 46 sq km. Every lunchbox comes equipped with a pair. Small restaurants offer the free hygienic option to customers who may be nervous about cleanliness in the kitchen.

At home or in smarter restaurants re-usable chopsticks, often made of plastic, are the norm and the tax is expected to encourage their greater use.

Chopstick etiquette, however, has not changed for centuries. Eat with the right hand and turn the palm face upwards. A palm facing downwards allows fortune to fall from one’s hands. For a girl, the farther she holds her chopsticks from the tip, the further from home will she find her husband.

Break a chopstick and you will have bad luck. Drop one and you will have to pay for the meal — but only after waiters have scurried to replace it with a new pair. Never stand chopsticks point-first in a bowl of rice, for this resembles incense burning in the temple and could symbolise death.

Legend has it that Confucius, the great sage of the 5th century BC, was a leading advocate. His reason: that instruments of killing must never appear at the dining table. Thus food was chopped into bite-sized pieces before reaching diners and knives were not permitted. At the imperial court, silver chopsticks were preferred. These, reputedly, would turn black if food had been poisoned with metal oxides. Lesser mortals dined with instruments made from ivory, bone, lacquered wood or bamboo — until the invention of plastic. The hardwearing material became the chopstick of choice in China until politics intervened.

Hu Yaobang, the late Communist Party chief, suggested in 1985: “We should prepare more knives and forks, buy more plates and sit at the table to eat Chinese food in the Western style, that is, each from his own plate. By doing so we can avoid contagious diseases.”

In the corridors of power, the proposal fell with a thud. Within two years Hu was out of a job. But his suggestion carried weight. Soon disposable chopsticks were all the rage.

At Jiaren Gourmet, a Beijing sidestreet restaurant, the owner shrugged: “The cost won’t be enough to make me change from disposable chopsticks.”

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