Kids’ relationship with food usually includes clothes getting stained, plates’ contents spilled on the floor, and parents shouting in anger. But students at a primary school in southwest China’s Chongqing are cooking up a storm of change thanks to their culinary skills that can serve up to 20 exquisite dishes.

Thirty-seven students from a class in Bashu Primary School have been whetting the appetite of netizens after pictures of them attentively picking vegetables and meticulously preparing food were posted and widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo. 

In one of the pictures posted online, a girl could be seen making a victory sign with sheer ecstasy in front of a variety of dishes she fixed herself, including Mapo doufu (stewed bean curd with minced pork in pepper sauce), a typical dish from southwest China’s Sichuan Province, to an egg drop soup nicely garnished with chopped scallion on top.

Tian Bingbing, the teacher in charge of the class, said that all 37 youngsters could each prepare some 20 different dishes after years of experience. She had carried out a survey to find out what dishes can each student make.

The students, now in sixth grade, started to make their way into the kitchen under the request of Tian when they were just in the second grade. They were asked to buy, wash and cook the ingredients all by themselves under the watchful eyes of their parents.

Some students told Chongqing Morning Post that they did not even know how to turn on the gas stove at the beginning. One admitted turning a fried dish into a soup after adding too much water to conceal the excessive amount of salt he had put.

The journey was definitely no cakewalk. Their years finding their way around the kitchen were bittersweet, marked with small successes and failed trials. For the parents, it wasn’t a pleasant trip either, as they had to endure the many times their children messed up the cooking space, before getting a knack of making certain dishes.

Wen Di, one of the students who specializes in bakery and a master in making fried rice with eggs, told local media that his parents now anticipate the arrival of weekends so they can eat what he creates.

“My mother has already shared with me our family’s ‘secret recipe’ in making good sauce,” said Yang Liu, another student.

“I have a great sense of accomplishment when my parents enjoy the food I cook,” Zhou Hongjin noted, while expressing appreciation to his parents. “if I feel tired after making a couple of dishes, I can't imagine what my parents, who have been cooking for me for so many years, feel”.

At a time teenagers are criticized for being generally careless and over-independent on their parents, the special cooking assignment has been largely backed up by the netizens.

“The school education should not only serve for exams,” @Yinwuxingyang commented on Weibo, adding “it is also the school’s obligation to teach the students some life skills”.

Meanwhile, @yusugetongzai said “the youngsters must learn to be self-independent because parents cannot be their caretakers for eternity”.

Tian, the teacher, said the move was initiated in an effort to support the students to be more independent and help them better take care of themselves as well as their family members. “They should practice (cooking) over and over again to make it a life-long skill,” she added.