Imagine a school where the students come armed not with pencils but with cleavers and chopsticks. Instead of in notebooks, their work is done in big, blackened woks. And the smells of ginger and soy, garlic and chili pepper and oil waft through the rooms.
The Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine in Chengdu, China, is this place.
The cooking school reopened just a couple of days after the May earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Sichuan province.
At the school, several thousand students undergo formal training to learn the art of modern Chinese cooking, as well as that of other cuisines. The students aim to become the next generation of Chinese chefs.
On one particular day, second-year students were learning how to cook Sichuan dishes including stir-fried bullfrog, fish-flavored stuffed eggplant, and squid with lychee-flavored sauce.
The instructor told the students they would have to cut the squid just right or it wouldn't blossom into a flower shape; it's supposed to look like a chrysanthemum.
While cooking, the only knife the students used was the cleaver, whether they cut squid, peeled ginger root, chopped mounds of garlic, whacked slabs of pork or squeezed the seeds out of chilies.
The students at the school are training in the hopes of finding a job. Some want to go overseas, where chefs are often more highly regarded, said second-year student Chang Le, who goes by the English name Alex.
Chang, 21, said if you're a chef in China, you don't have a lot of stature.
Chang said he first learned how to cook from his father. It was a hobby Chang practiced at home. He said it was when he graduated from high school that he decided he wanted to go overseas.
"I'm very romantic," Chang said. "I want to go abroad for working."
Chang Le, whose name translates to "often happy," said he ultimately wants to go to the Mediterranean region, where he can "work" and "chill" at the same time.
For the summer, Chang joined an exchange program and explored France, including Paris, Marseilles, Cannes and Monaco. It was just as romantic as he imagined, he said.
In the fall, he said, he hopes to go to Australia for a one-year internship at a restaurant.
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