For Chinese people who want to taste an authentic Italian pizza, and to learn the art of pizza-making, there is no better place to go than Naples, in Italy.

Naples is where the pizza was born and its origins here can be traced back to three centuries ago. Wang Wenyu has been studying Italian in Naples for three months, but when I met him he was kneading pizza dough under the watchful eye of Stefano Dalmini at ACIIEF vocational school.

Dalmini is a pizzaiuolo, as pizza makers are known in Italy, and he’s spent 24 years perfecting his skills which he is now passing on to a room full of eager students.

Making a Neapolitan pizza is a delicate art that now has UNESCO world heritage status. The UN’s cultural body recognized the Naples style of pizza-making, where the pizzaiuoli spin and twirl the dough in the air, as an essential part of Italian culture which has been handed down for generations.

In the class, the students are taught how to stretch out the dough and beat it into a circle to oxygenate it before adding the toppings. For a classic Margherita it’s simple – tomato, oil, mozzarella and basil. But Dalmini says there is also a very important secret ingredient – passion, and a lot of love. "If you put passion into your pizza, it’s going to turn out better," he insists

Pizza is relatively new in China but the growing presence of Western food chains has sparked a pizza boom. Wang Wenyu says he will definitely be making pizza for his family when he goes back home. Director of ACIIEF, Dolores Cuomo, says the school would like to welcome more students from China: "learning about food is a great way to connect our two cultures." And Dalmini says he is sure that one day there will be a champion Chinese pizzaiolo.