Cooking a peaceful plotline

For most foreigners learning Chinese, nihao (hello) and xiexie (thank you) are the most common first words.

Omar Sherif, however, found himself saying a different Chinese phrase far more frequently: shou gong — "it's a wrap".

The 16-year-old Egyptian actor has won over Chinese audiences this summer with Once Upon a Time in the Middle East, which topped the country's daily box office for 25 consecutive days following its release on Aug 11.

In the movie, Sherif — who was cast when he was 13 — plays Seif, a local orphan in an unnamed war-torn Middle Eastern country. Gifted with a talent for cooking, the boy is taken in as an apprentice by Xu Fu, a veteran Chinese chef played by Shen Teng.

Xu is a debt-ridden father who leaves home to work at a Middle Eastern restaurant and chooses to stay and earn more money after the country is suddenly plunged into war. In the early days, life remains relatively peaceful. His boss, a local official, manages to keep the restaurant supplied with electricity and water despite the conflict.

With his excellent culinary skills, Xu turns the restaurant into not only a local favorite but also a gathering place for soldiers, journalists and embassy employees. Alongside his friend Ma Junsheng, the restaurant's front-desk manager played by Jiang Qiming, Xu takes in more than 20 orphans, including Seif. But the seemingly peaceful days do not last. Xu and Ma, along with Seif, are wrongly imprisoned after being suspected of their involvement in a bombing.

Just days before their scheduled release, they fall into the hands of a group of extremist militants. Seif loses an eye while trying to protect the two men. When Xu discovers that the extremists plan to train orphans as suicide bombers, he risks his life to lead the children on a desperate escape — but the story takes an even more complicated turn.

For Sherif, the role was more than a demanding acting experience. Selected from more than 6,000 young hopefuls in Egypt, he tells China Daily that working on a Chinese film was an entirely new experience. With Chinese ancestry — his great-grandfather was from Shandong province — Sherif spent three months in Egypt learning Mandarin and Chinese cooking techniques before joining the production.