Chef transforms skill into luck

Cookery teacher and veteran chef Zhang Hui attributes his career success to luck, but behind his modesty are hard-trained skills and dedication to details.

Among the hundreds of candidates for the national Antarctic exploration team in 2010, Zhang was the chosen from his home province of Hubei in Central China after many rounds of appraisals. When a local chef from Wuhan, the provincial capital, was required at the Chinese embassy in Thailand in mid-July, he again was the one to go after tense insider deliberations.

"I've been lucky," Zhang said with a genteel smile.