A moment in time: Reform flavor

China's economic progress over the past four decades has also meant the evolution of cooking utensils used by common people.

People from Southwest China's Sichuan province get their caldrons and woks fixed or maintained in the photo (above) from 1992. The caldrons were mostly made of iron.

Now it is no longer rare to see Chinese tourists buy expensive top-end rice cookers abroad, as the photo from a Laox store in Tokyo's Ginza district in 2015, shows.