Crayfish is a delicious food on Chinese table, but have you ever thought that it would become a research focus in school?
This year, more than 80 students are admitted to the course at Qianjiang Crayfish School, China's only college nurturing talents for the crayfish industry. The school is affiliated to Jianghan Art Vocational College in Hubei Province in central China.
Students will start their studies this fall, focusing on catering management, marketing, cooking and nutrition respectively. Students are between 18 to 40 years old, with many having catering business experience before. They are expected to receive associate degree after completing courses in two or three years.
According to reports, China now has a crayfish market worth over 14 billion US dollars. China is the world's largest producer of crayfish with an annual production of over 600,000 tons, about 12 times that of 2003. Meanwhile, there are at least 17,670 crayfish restaurants in China as of June last year – three times the number of KFCs in the country.
"Crayfish-related industries are booming, but there is scarcity in operation professions. So we want to nurture talents and improve the system. Some graduates would like to work in big catering companies, while others plan to start their own business." Xia Zhongzhi with the recruiting department of Qianjiang Crayfish School told Shanghai-based media The Paper.
Founded in 2015, the school has already trained more than 1,000 crayfish chefs last year.
Due to fast development of society and industries, many new majors and schools have become research areas in recent years to make the industries sustainable. For example, China's top liquor producer Moutai opens a college to cultivate spirits-related professions in May. At the same time, a dozen Chinese colleges and universities are offering the burgeoning e-sports sector this year.
In an era of Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University has already offered courses such as computational biology, speech recognition, cognition as well as machine learning for undergraduates.
