The ducks have flown to the West

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Dining at Da Dong, you will see on the menu that each main dish is illustrated with a line of Chinese poems or prose. Every dish seems to be a paean to traditional Chinese art and culture, and comes out beautifully, and well-conceived, just like works of art.

"It's very difficult to explain yijing cuisine to Westerners, in particular the profound poetry, and stories depicting each dish on the menu," Dong says.

"Rather than taking up space translating lines of verse into English on the menu, and at the same time risking losing the original meaning and artistic conception, they are better left in the original Chinese characters."

Dong says he started scouting for an overseas location for his chain eight years ago, but he soon came up against the problem that ducks cannot be exported from China, cooked or uncooked.

He thus began searching overseas for locally produced ducks that could meet the standards for making Da Dong's subuni roast duck.