Nouvelle cuisine has done much to promote food as art, but great presentation has been essential to Chinese food for centuries. Mike Peters writes.

As a dozen colleagues enjoy a wine-tasting lunch at a top Beijing hotel, the kitchen continues to buzz as finishing touches are put on the dessert.

Heavy cream and sugar had been heated in saucepans. The sweet spot of vanilla beans had been scraped for the seeds, now infused with the cream and sugar. The mixture had been combined with gelatin in cold water. Custard cups, already oiled, had received the setting panna-cotta like hungry chicks, before being toted to the refrigerator.