Abstract: The pneumonic plague, which spread over Northeast China between November, 1910 and April, 1911, exposed the drawbacks of the traditional Chinese eating habits with chopsticks and their consumption of wild animals. Since Wu Lien-Teh advocated the “Approach to Sanitary Dining” in 1915, China had witnesed a social argument on this topic for nearly 30 years. It has become a common sense that the traditional Chinese way of eating together with each one’s only chopsticks is hazardous to hygiene and must be changed. In order to prevent infectious diseases, people got involved in the discussion of reforming the dining habits. The argument focused on three main proposals: 1) serving and eating separately; 2) serving a pair of chopsticks or a spoon on each course; and 3) serving two pairs of chopsticks for each diner. It was found that the two-pair-chopstick method was agreed to by the most people and thus most applied in environments like kindergartens, schools and colleges. In addition, this method was widely practiced in households and at diners. The “Approach to Sanitary Dining” discussions and implementations expanded into a wide range of fields including social public health, infectious disease prevention, table manners, school education, and self-cultivation. However, due to the historical limitations, this social movement was discontinued by the political situation at that time. The SARS in 2002 once again triggered the argument on the same topic. In the end of 2019, the outbreak of coronavirus made the argument even sharper.

Key words: Wu Lien-teh, approach to sanitary dining, two-pair-chopstick system, table manners