He learned from Lin Jiu, a Cantonese cuisine master chef, and for the first three years all he learned and practiced were the basic skills. He had to get up at 7 am and go home only once a week, he says.

Skills with a knife were one essential.

"These days all ingredients such as ribs, chicken wings or chicken thighs are separated and cleaned before being sent to the kitchen, but in those days a whole pig or chicken arrived in the cooking area."

He can debone a fish and cut off the maximum amount of fish meat in one minute, he says. In one cutting competition he managed to cut chicken breast into shreds in three minutes, with strict rules on size and dimensions. Judges put the shreds into a bowl of water to check that each portion of meat was completely and cleanly cut, he says.

"There's not a single dish that can be successful unless you have very good knife skills."

Carving is another skill Zhao became expert at.