It is my turn at the wok. My classmates leer over me, ready for a laugh. Every afternoon, we cook in the same teams of ten, gathered round a table, with two gas burners, a couple of woks, a chopping board and a few bowls and plates at our disposal. None of my particular friends are in my team, so I am obliged to work with nine young men who make strenuous efforts to avoid talking to me, and who are openly sceptical about the idea of a foreign woman becoming a Sichuanese chef. It is tedious, really. I have to fight to participate when we divide up the tasks, or else I find they all scarper to the store cupboards and the sinks without me. And I have to draw on all my reserves of bossy older sisterliness to engage them in the most trivial conversation. But, as always, the cooking itself makes me so sweetly happy that I don't really care about these inconveniences.

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