Cooking up a communal storm

Students at one Chinese university are getting a taste for homemade cooking.

Learning how to cook can be a fun process, especially a food-making adventure with good friends at college, but, of course, it could also be a recipe for disaster.

For Huo Zhiyi, this year's Dragon Boat Festival, which fell on Thursday, was surely one to remember.

Instead of having a holiday feast at a restaurant, the 21-year-old junior student majoring in environmental science and her classmates from Shenyang Agricultural University, Liaoning province, cooked for themselves in a communal kitchen.

This brand-new communal kitchen, which occupies 340 square meters on the second floor of the university's First Canteen, including a 22-square-meter cooking area, opened early last month.

According to the university, it was established to meet college students' independent living and diverse dietary needs.

Students can use cookware and appliances such as pans, ovens and freezers, and various condiments for free — all provided by the university, and best of all, they can avail of free cooking lessons from professional chefs.

All they have to prepare is the basic ingredients, such as meat and fresh vegetables.

As using high-powered electrical appliances in dormitories is prohibited in most domestic universities, students usually eat at campus canteens or buy take-out meals.