I know that I’m not going to go down in the annals for this contribution, or even probably ever see my name in the “mailbag,” but if you aren’t interested in this, who would be? (Actually, a quick Web search for “history and cultual” reveals a dozen or more people who would be, but I don’t care about them.)

I am fascinated by the various editions and redactions of the copy on the classic red-wrappered disposable bamboo chopstick. For years I was accustomed to seeing [sic]:

Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your nice Chinese Food with Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history and cultual.”

The instructions on the reverse were generally pretty clean.

BUT NOW here I am vacationing in rural Maine, and the local Chinese place gives me this:

Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history. and cultual.

Notice the capitalization variations, additional period, and conflation of “ri” into “n” – a telltale optical character-recognition error! Somebody is scanning in old chopstick wrappers to produce new ones! Glonous, indeed! It took me all of twenty seconds to type that copy – can we expect less from our utensil importers?

The instructions on the reverse contain similar OCR errors, including the transformation of “m” into “rn,” of “o” into “e,” of “f” into “t,” and of “l” into “i.” A complete transcript follows, with no additional commentary:

Learn how to use your chopsticks

Tuk under thurnb and held firmly
Add second chcostick
hold it as you hold
a pencil
Hold tirst chopstick
in originai position
move the second
one up and down
Now you can pick
up anything:

(I additionally appreciate the final colon, pointing as it does out of the text, indicating either the drawing of chopsticks being used successfully to pick up a dumpling, or the successful use of chopsticks of the real-life reader of the instructions.)

Is it possible that the optical character recognition is being done not by a computer, which seems ludicrous for such a small sample of text, but by a human who does not know the English alphabet--a native Chinese human, for instance? One who sees “ri” and fumbles around his keyboard or lead type (depending) until he spots the very similar-looking “n"? That is the theory I propose.

Thank you.

-- Paul