chefs

In the early 1960s, China began to grant titles to chefs based on testing and evaluation. In 1963, over a hundred chefs obtained such ‘special-class’ certificates. Another 800 achieved this status in 1982 and thousands more in the 1990s. On 6 March 2001, the government issued a set of ‘Standards for Chinese Professionals and Skilled Workers.’ According to the document, chefs are classified as Master of Chinese Cuisine, Master of Western Cuisine, Master of Chinese Bakery, Master of Western Bakery, and Restaurant Servers. Each of these five titles is further divided into three levels: junior, intermediate and senior, and each level requires a year of formal training and a year of learning on the job. The training integrates traditional apprenticeship with a modern education offered by a dozen national training centres in major cities (e.g.

Wuhan, Chongqing and Xi’an) and in numerous local culinary schools and college programmes throughout the country. Heilongjiang College of Business, for example, graduated China’s first Masters of Culinary Art.

Since 1983, half a dozen national cooking contests have been organized to enhance culinary skill and encourage innovation. In half a century, Chinese chefs have created over ten thousand recipes. They have participated and excelled in a number of international culinary Olympics. The job of chef has become a respectable and lucrative profession. Several thousands have been entered in the Who’s Who of Famous Chefs (Mingchu dadian). Lack of training in nutrition, however, is still a weakness of Chinese culinary education, which nonetheless produces chefs of superb skill.

YUAN HAIWANG