A Chinese restaurant recruited a new chef by inviting applicants to slice a melon on a woman's stomach.

The hotel restaurant, in Hankou, Hubei province, put the knife skills of more than 15 candidates to the test.

A woman volunteer laid on a table, with her stomach covered with a thin sheet of plastic, while would-be chefs chopped up their melons.

"They had to chop the gourd into very thin pieces in a limited time," said a spokesman for the hotel.

The successful candidate, Chef Hu Gua, won the job by choping up his melon in less than a minute without hurting the woman.

Chef Hu told the Changjiang Business Daily that he had been very confident before the recruitment test.

But he added: "I still felt a bit nervous when it came to is as it was the first time I ever chopped up something on a woman's belly."

One of the judges commented: "Hu did such a god job - you could tell he had been in the trade for more than 10 years."

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