Pigs of paradise

Famed 'fragrant' pork, a Tibetan-style delicacy, delivers an authentic taste of Shangri-La, Xu Junqian discovers at a high-altitude tasting.

The rarefied air on the Shangri-La plateau - with an altitude of 3,270 meters in southern China's Yunnan province - isn't really the reason that chef Wu Tinggang speaks slowly with deliberate pauses. Neither isn't the silky smooth cabernet sauvignon produced from the highest vineyard in the world, Shangri-La Vineyard, though Wu sips more than half a dozen of glasses throughout the evening.

During his almost-20-year culinary career, the 37-year-old has cooked scores of steaks per day as part of training back at school, and catered for a luxury cruise with 5,000 passengers and 2,000 crew members for eight months. Now, however, in his new role as executive chef at Hylandia by Shangri-La, Wu simply finds it "an obligation" to slow down, enjoy work and life, and be idle, if not downright lazy.