Food, especially China's cuisine industry, has become an integral component of cultural exchanges, which are being increasingly used to break barriers caused by different languages and cultural backgrounds. In recent years, an increasing number of Chinese women chefs, especially young chefs, have stood out on the world stage. They have shown the world their excellent cooking skills, and their innovative ideas for cuisine development. More importantly, they have presented Chinese women's wisdom and strength as they have promoted Chinese cuisine and culture in the new era.
Women of China highlights several stories involving Chinese women who have smartly combined the concepts and techniques of Chinese cuisine with food that is popular worldwide. The women have been leaving their marks on cultural exchanges, and those marks have helped advance the creative and vigorous global food culture. In this article, we share the story of Li Zhanxu, a head chef who has worked on the integration of Chinese food ingredients and tableware with French cuisine.
Two years ago, Li Zhanxu, then 27, was awarded the prestigious Michelin Young Chef Award in the 2024 Beijing Michelin Guide. Li, who was born in Beijing and raised in the Chinese capital's Xicheng District, has "taste" memories formed during her childhood. "When I was a student, I was fascinated by the taste of chestnuts, roasted with brown sugar, and roasted sweet potatoes," Li recalls.
After she graduated from high school, Li moved to France to study at Institut Paul Bocuse, a famous French culinary institute in Lyon. In addition to culinary techniques, Li learned accounting, marketing, human resources, law, interior design and foreign languages while studying at the institute. Most importantly, she realized, during her studies, she must be diligent, persistent and show respect to food ingredients and cooking skills, especially if she wanted to be an excellent chef.
In 2021, after Li completed her six years of studies in France, she returned to Beijing. She became head chef at a restaurant situated in a hutong, in Dongcheng District. Since then, she has concentrated on developing integrated dishes, which combine Chinese food ingredients with the cooking skills of French cuisine.
"I have tried my best to discover the 'chemistry' formed between Chinese and French cuisines. For example, I have used stewing, pickling, grilling, low-temperature cooking and other French culinary techniques to cook food we can easily find in a local market," Li explains.
In January this year, Li participated in a culinary-communication event held in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Li collaborated with a team from a French restaurant, and they cooked a set, which contained five dishes, for each guest, during the two nights of banquets. The menu included a dessert made with Chinese water chestnuts. "This ingredient is commonly used for making desserts in south China. It reflects Chinese people's fondness for seemingly simple, yet mild, food," Li says.
The Chinese water chestnut does not have a strong taste on its own. Li enriched the dessert's taste by adding coconut and passion fruit. She mixed coconut pulp with the coconut milk to create a cream. She cooked a mousse with the passion fruit, and then, she combined the cream and mousse with the Chinese water chestnuts to increase the dessert's fragrance and its sweet and sour tastes. "In France, people rarely try a Chinese soup-based dessert, like the one I cooked with Chinese water chestnuts. I was happy to see guests at every table showed their interest in my innovative dessert, recently in Hong Kong. Some of the guests even came up to me to ask for the recipe," Li says.
During the past few years, Li has continuously worked on the integration of Chinese food ingredients and tableware with French cuisine. She has cooked desserts, such as mousse, Choux pastry and crème brûlée, with Chinese jasmine tea, Oolong tea and black tea. Li specifically mentions one popular dessert she developed: "In around two hours, every day when my restaurant provided the afternoon-tea menu, we received 100-200 customers. Instead of adding sugar to make traditional Choux pastry, I used the sugar made from dried and powdered red dates. Chinese are familiar with the fragrance and sweet taste of red dates. So, I combined this ingredient with the cooking method of a French dessert."
In addition to her cooking, Li attaches importance to the tableware used to display the various dishes. "I like to use crude pottery, produced in Jingdezhen, the city in east China's Jiangxi Province well-known for its pottery and porcelain production. I think Chinese aesthetics emphasizes natural and smart combination of food and containers," Li says.
As visiting China is becoming a must option for more and more people worldwide, Li has received many foreign customers, who have found her workplace for the specific purpose of tasting her food. What is Li's work plan for the near future? "I hope to develop a full menu, which will include a starter, main course, staple food, snack and dessert. It will be a set of modern Chinese cuisine, which will fit our catering habits, food ingredients and cooking methods," Li answers.
As a young, talented woman who is a head chef, Li says she knows perfectly well it is not easy for women chefs to stand out in the culinary sector. But, she looks forward to embracing a promising future.
"If women chefs form social groups and communicate with each other frequently, I am confident Chinese women chefs will harness their power and bring greater, and positive, influence upon the development of the catering industry," Li concludes.
Photos from Interviewee
(Women of China English Monthly February 2026)
Editor: Wang Shasha
