Many fast food and mid-level Asian restaurants offer their patrons disposable wooden chopsticks. (Higher end restaurants usually use ceramic or metal chopsticks.)
When you receive disposable chopsticks you can very easily create a placeholder for the chopsticks from the paper wrapping so that when you set the chopsticks down they do not touch the table. It's a fun and quick thing to construct and serves as a neat little dinner conversation piece the first time you show someone. It's dinner time origami! This blog entry provides step-by-step instructions on how to build such a placeholder.
(STEP 1) Start by removing the chopsticks from the paper wrapper.
(STEP 2) Fold the paper wrapper at the midpoint so that the top half is perpendicular to the bottom half.
(STEP 3) Flip the wrapper over by taking the bottom left corner and flipping it up so that it's the upper right corner. (Flip the wrapper, don't rotate it. The downward facing side from Step 2 should be upward facing at the end of this step.)
(STEP 4) Fold down the portion of the wrapper extending to the right so that is parallel with the portion already pointing down. At the end of this step you should have what looks like a tall house with a pointed roof.
(STEP 5) Flip the wrapper like you did in Step 3 - by taking the lower left corner and flipping it over so that it is now the upper right corner.
(STEP 6) At this point your wrapper looks like a tilted tall house. Take the top strip (the right side of the house) and fold it back to the left in a fashion similar to the folds performed in Steps 2 and 4. Finally, tuck this strip you just folded so that it's underneath the bottom strip (the left side of the house).
If you did everything right, your wrapper should now look like the following:
It should lay flat against the table. If it's springing up or unfolding on you, chances are you did not tuck the fold from Step 6 underneath the other strip.
Congratulations! At this point you have a placeholder for your chopsticks. You can now set them down on the table without dirtying the part you put in your mouth. This is the simplest of the chopstick wrapper folds. There are more intricate ones that involve more folds but product more interesting designs. The one outlined above is a great pattern to get started on. If you're interested in more intricate patterns, there are a few chopstick origami videos on YouTube.
A quick personal aside...... There was a time in my life when I could not use chopsticks. I knew how I was supposed to hold them and use them, but I just never had enough practice or experience to be any good. This ignorance was due in part to the fact that you don't need to be a chopsticks aficionado to enjoy a meal at an Asian restaurant in the US. Most restaurants bring you a fork by default and do not give you chopsticks unless you're Asian or you ask for them explicitly. Yes, it was a little embarrassing at times when, at a restaurant, all other dinner guests asked for chopsticks and I had to stick with the fork, but that was infinitely less embarrassing than trying to pick up a General Tsao chicken piece with chopsticks and accidentally flinging it across the table. There was no impetus to learn how to use chopsticks until I met my wife, whose parents emigrated from Korea - I didn't want to be the only person at a family dinner or party using a fork. It took a while to get the hang of it, but I think it's safe to say that today I am quite adept at using chopsticks for a white guy from the Midwest. 