"Unlike some current dishes involving carving in which each part is cut separately and then stuck together, when we were studying carving things had to be cut in one whole piece.

"My master taught me all about craftsmanship. He reckoned that in learning Chinese cuisine you needed to inherit traditional skills but also be creative enough to arrive at your own style. You need not only master the skills of each Chinese dish but also have enough courage to break barriers between them and fuse them."

In the 1980s he was invited to be the expert for a Chinese restaurant in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. There he took part in a national cooking competition and won the gold medal and best chef award with several Chinese dishes he created.

Zhao says he made a wax gourd soup for that competition. He used the wax gourd as a vessel and carved birds and flowers on the outside, and he put wax gourd balls in the soup, a creation that delighted the Romanian judges.