A Chinese Restaurant opens in Baghdad...

Surely, this is the biggest sign of progress, no?

Despite a bomb blast that rattled windows and sent a panicked co-worker scurrying back to China, Baghdad's sole Chinese restaurant has defied the odds to keep its doors open.

Cao Lu and his partner Yang Chunxia, operators of the "China Restaurant", have brushed off the violence that continues to rock the Iraqi capital daily with a dash of Zen-like stoicism.

"Every place in the world is the same, people need to live and make a living. Baghdad is no different," Cao, 46, told AFP inside his two-table restaurant that he began operating about six months ago.

"My objective is the same, just to make enough money to get by," said the laid-off steel factory worker from northern China who until two years ago had never left his country.

"My path was this one -- to come to Baghdad, this is the road that opened to me."

Short of staff, lunch time is busy as the eatery the size of a bathroom with red Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling and posters of kung fu film stars Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee on the walls, fills with Iraqi patrons.

Cao and Lu, shorthanded since another colleague left following a nearby bomb attack last month, sweat profusely as they take orders, shake large woks on the fiery stove and then clean up.

Business is not hugely profitable but is a steady 40 to 50 US dollars a day, or four times what Cao made at his factory and enough to consider expanding operations -- perhaps with an Iraqi partner.