Do not stick your chopsticks upright in your rice!

Do not stick your chopsticks upright in your rice. This is considered as a very bad manner and it makes people cringe. Because it’s the way a bowl of rice is offered to a dead person, at their deathbed or in front of their photograph on the household Buddhist altar.

Also, do not spear your food. Spearing with one chopstick is really bad. Even with two together it’s not considered very polite. Please practice your chopsticks so that you can pick up foods properly or you might want to ask for folk and spoon at a public place, for example, where formal ceremonies take place.