Out of one's depth: 04 (Chinese person eating pita/pide bread as a first course)

I've been watching a mainland Chinese drama series set in China in the 1930s and 1940s (before, during and after the Japanese Invasion).  

    There is a scene with three of the men in the story eating a Western meal at a restaurant (in Shanghai or Qingdao).  On each one's plate are two slices of bread, a slice of spam, one fried egg, two cross-sections of carrot and some unidentifiable brown thing. One of the men, very successful at running a dyeing factory but who had started life as a beggar and was illiterate, couldn't handle the Western cutlery provided, and asked for chopsticks.

    This reminds me of what I'd witnessed at a soup kitchen meal run by a Catholic church charity.

    The first course was half a pouch of pita/pide flatbread, with dips (tzatziki, hummus and taramasalata) and some salad on the side.

(AI says)

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East Mediterranean flatbreads (like Greek pita, Turkish lavash, pide, and yufka) are traditionally eaten with your hands, not cutlery.  In Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dining cultures, flatbread serves as both the food and the "utensil" itself.

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    I saw a young Chinese (mainland or Hong Kong) man in his mid-/late-20s or early 30s at the next table from mine using his knife to spread the dips on his flatbread, like what one would do with jam or honey.  

    He then proceeded to cut up the flatbread into smaller pieces with his knife and fork, like what one would do with a piece of steak, and deliver each piece to his mouth with his fork, the way one would do it at a Western meal.

(London, 2026)