High school graduates in Hubei Province now have the opportunity to major in cooking crayfish, marketing crayfish, or managing the crayfish industry.

From this year the courses are available at the Jianghan Art Vocational College in Qianjiang.

The new majors have been set up by the College and a local training enterprise specializing in providing the skills of cooking crayfish. Once admitted, students will learn basic theoretical knowledge at school in the slack season of the industry, and then practice in catering companies in summer, when the biggest amount of cultivated crayfish will be harvested.

Hot crayfish [Photo:guokr.com]

Qianjing is known as the "hometown of crayfish" in China. Cooking and exporting the freshwater crustacea is the leading industry in the city and a main income source for local farmers. The city's mayor last year proposed a "master cooks and crayfish restaurants" plan aiming at cultivating 10,000 crayfish breeders, 10,000 crayfish cooks, and open 3,000 crayfish restaurants in Qianjing to boost the industry.

With the help of the government, graduates will be immune from unemployment, as they will sign an employment contract with the college, the local crayfish industry development bureau, and F & B companies when they are admitted to the college, and upon graduation, governmental and business institutions will help allocate job opportunities to the students.

Crayfish, officially procambarus clarkia, is native to North America and has been on the dinner table in the West for over a century.

But the Chinese have been catching up quickly. For those staying up late, hot crayfish is almost a totem dish for their midnight snack recipe. There is little food as appealing to Chinese stomachs, from the cold northeast regions to the humid south coastal areas.

China also sells the product worldwide. According to customs data, crayfish from Qianjiang occupy over 60% of the European market, earning foreign exchange of more than 100 million US dollars on average every year.