BRING YOUR OWN CHOPSTICKS

A Chinese legislator who heads a forestry company says the country is cutting down too many trees just to make disposable chopsticks. Bai Guangxin said 20 million trees are felled a year to produce 80 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks. “We must change our consumption habits and encourage people to carry their own tableware,” he said. Bai said that people should use metal or plastic reusable chopsticks, but the British press picked up the story last week and reported that the Chinese government was advocating a switch to knives and forks. The error caused a furor on Weibo, the Chinese social media site, which lit up with complaints about “more crappy British Anglo media propaganda.”