He Jingjun, a middle school art teacher and knitting expert, has come up with an interesting way to portray the famous culinary delicacies of Zhuji, east China's Zhejiang Province: traditional crochet knitting. Salt-baked chicken, steamed sliced pork with preserved mustard, sticky rice dumplings, glutinous rice balls – you name it, she has made it!

Using wool to weave a series of delicate and lifelike cuisines with Zhuji characteristics, the ingenuity of her work creates a mouth-watering effect.

Making vivid details, such as texture of rice cakes or layers of egg rolls, is the most difficult part of the process.

The secret, according to He, is to make great efforts on observing and experimenting. Every time she makes a piece of "food," she initially looks for a photo of it and then analyzes it. To express the texture she uses threads for shape and color of the food, so that people can differentiate the characteristics of each dish. 

In color processing, particularly, post-dyeing is adopted for the effect to be more similar to the actual food and thus more lively. For example, when making steamed pork with preserved mustard, He first used transparent nail polish and spray paint for a shiny effect of the meat. After failing and trying many times she finally created an exclusive "recipe" to achieve a greasy effect, beyond using simple nail polish.

Same methods are applied for pure white "rice" and the "salt" on the salt-baked chicken, which are all cut out in small sections with white threads of different materials. There are also pure white "rice" and the flour-like rice scattered on the chicken. Waiting for details, He fumbles slowly and tries over and over again just to make the final product shine.

The "dishes" have gone viral on China's Twitter-like Weibo, with numerous netizens' lauding the teacher's creativity. On top of all, it was her innovative idea and dedication that contributed to the authentic-looking pieces of local cuisine.