With more than 3,000 cooking shows under his belt and a television career spanning 37 years, Martin Yan – of the famous “Yan Can Cook, So Can You” motto – is a household name across the globe. But despite his wacky persona, ninja knife skills and his seemingly cartoonish, American-friendly portrayal of the chop suey master in the kitchen, Yan couldn’t be more serious about his work.
Born in Guangzhou to a restauranteur father and a grocer mother, Yan first received formal training when, in a classic case of tough love, he was shipped to Hong Kong at the age of 13 to work in his uncle’s restaurant. His father had recently died, and his mother thought her cherished son would find more opportunities in the “golden egg” of Hong Kong.
Inspired by her courage and the idea that the Asian Dream was there for the taking, the tenacious young man convinced the owner of a local cooking school to take him on for free in exchange for doing all the shopping and lumping it up to the seventh floor of the school’s walkup building.
This industrious nature also fared Yan well years later when in pursuit of the American Dream following his emigration in 1969. After being approached by Yan, the Dean of UC Davis’s School of Continuing Education permitted him to put an ad in the local paper to gage interest in a Chinese cooking class. Lo and behold, interest there was, and this fresh-of-the boat migrant with broken English had his first teaching gig.
It was here, far from the cameras, that Yan claims he first developed his lively television persona. “The class was full of doctors, lawyers and accountants who had been working all day, and in every class there would be people falling asleep in front of me,” Yan confessed while grabbing a quick lunch with Coconuts HK during last week’s Food Expo.
“I used to crack jokes, tease them and make a lot of noise. Very few Chinese people joke, and I think it’s this sense of humour that has saved me. Without it, Yan Can Cook wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has.”
But it wasn’t until he moved to Calgary, Canada, to help a friend open a restaurant that his star quality was first spotted. Leading so-called “Lunch and Learn” classes where diners take a cooking lesson before their meal, Yan was asked to make a guest appearance on a local TV show. His magnetism was undeniable, and the Yan brand was born.
Today boasting two cooking schools (one in his now home city of San Francisco and the other in Shenzhen), three restaurants, dozens of cook books, guest judge appearances on Hell’s Kitchen and Top Chef, and the title of Master Chef bestowed upon him by the American Culinary Federation, Yan has become way more than just a TV personality.
This energetic man with a twinkle in his eye insists, however, that his celebrity status is just a byproduct of his love for both food and people.
“I don’t believe I’m in the entertainment business, I’m a chef,” he said. “I don’t need to be on television to make a living, but I’ve become a celebrity chef because I love to share. Food is about sharing. Just like if a fashion designer sees a star wearing their creation they get a sense of accomplishment. That’s not about money, but seeing how the customer responds.”
It is this intense connection with his audience that Yan cherishes most of all. His favourite moments are when young chefs tell him they were inspired by watching his shows as kids, and he vividly recalls a book signing during which a teary-eyed woman thanked him for being the only thing that could tempt a smile out of her mother in the last days before she died.
“Having an impact on people’s lives”, Yan says, is his biggest achievement, even when considering the fact that last year he was picked, alongside Jackie Chan and a Chinese Buddhist Monk with thousands of followers, as one of 10 people to receive an award from the Chinese government for promoting Chinese culture across the world.
Whether coercion or coincidence, the growth of Chinese culinary culture in America since Yan’s arrival cannot be denied.
“Thirty years ago when I first moved to America, very few people knew how to use chop sticks, very few people had soy sauce or a wok at home. Now it’s practically 90 percent. There were only 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese restaurants. Now there’s 56,000, and about one third of them have my picture on the wall!” Yan laughs.
Pressing upon Coconuts HK with a cheeky wink that it’s untraditional to ask a man’s age in China (Wikipedia says he’s 65), Yan confirms suspicions that he has no plans to retire anytime soon, citing his all-time TV chef idol Julia Child, who continued her career into her 90s.
Travelling on average 255 days a year, he says he never fails to find fresh inspiration, and with his own vegetable garden, six burners and three refrigerators at his house in the San Fran hills, he even continues to practice his craft at home.
Declaring congee has his go-to comfort food (“You can eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snack”), it’s clear that no matter where he goes in the world and however much he cooks, Yan will always crave and create the food of his heritage.
Yan does his famous ‘deboning a ckicken in 18 seconds’ trick
Don’t be fooled into thinking Yan as a man stuck in the past, however, as he claims to have forgotten the details of most of the things he’s done, including (rather conveniently) the exact time and location when he beat his own record of deboning a chicken in 18 seconds by a whole five seconds.
However, as frustrating this may be for the journalist trying to pin down the hard and fast facts of his awesomeness, Yan’s philosophy to always look forwards is both attractive and inspiring. “I always tell people life is not how much you’ve done in the past, it’s about how much more you can do in the future,” Yan says.
No doubt he’ll excel there too.
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