Utensils make cooking easier in Xizang

LHASA — Before last year, Cai Shuailong had never set foot on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the world's highest plateau, in the Xizang autonomous region. Little did he expect that the stainless steel pressure cooker manufacturing company, where he serves as general manager, would one day open a factory there to produce high-altitude cooking utensils.

Now, the 42-year-old embarks on a 4,000-kilometer journey across the heartland of China every month, shuttling between his company's headquarters in East China's Zhejiang province and Lhasa, capital of Xizang, in Southwest China.

The company's Lhasa factory started production in November last year. So far, it has sold 600,000 high-altitude utensils in Xizang. More than half the items are pressure cookers that use a new patented technology to better meet the real-life needs of people living on the plateau.