The modern world record, then, is an entirely self-generated phenomenon: it exists only to be witnessed and recorded, and its specific content matters far less than its general status as a record - hence the growth of bizarre record attempts such as eating jelly with chopsticks against the clock, assembling giant stacks of poppadoms or building the world's largest chocolate igloo.
There, they cracked the problem by developing chopsticks.
In the past some local people boiled up whole gibbons to turn them into a sort of 'gibbon jelly' for use as a traditional medicine, while others told Turvey that if you made chopsticks out of gibbon arm bones, they can tell you if your food is poisoned or not.
Thus for most of recorded history, those not using chopsticks either ate with their hands, with cutlery made from metals that taste quite strong, or from other nice-tasting materials such as wood.
He realised that he did not have any chopsticks.
Mr Huang has been handing out thousands of pairs of reusable chopsticks to his fans.But persuading restaurant-goers to use them will be another matter.
The only question left is whether the frugal innovators who come out on top will use forks or chopsticks.
Only a Japanese, you see, can appreciate the way that Japan's unique rice grains cling to each other just so; how ineffably beautiful they look when collected on the end of chopsticks; how the taste seems divinely created to complement Japanese cooking.
One sold two pairs of chopsticks for the equivalent of just over $3, but a few minutes later approached the Maoist who had bought them to demand another $3 because the salesman had made a muddle.
For now Messrs Lee and Hughes, and their workers, keep busy shearing, steaming, shaving, cutting and drying huge logs into rough chopsticks.
The resourceful chef cuts the legs off chairs and an old table so visitors can dine on the floor; he nicks judo-suits from a friend's sports club and dyes them red to serve as kimonos; Gisela, the waitress, is transformed into a makeshift Geisha with floral aprons; his carpenter-friend fashions chopsticks based on Rolf's son's drumsticks.
