American chef and culinary writer Martin Yan, a Chinese immigrant from Hong Kong. Since 1982, he has been the host of the acclaimed PBS-TV cookery program Yan Can Cook.

Yan was born in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China to a restaurant father and a grocer mother. She had ancestry in Hoiping.

At the age of twelve, Yan started cooking. He relocated to Hong Kong when he was 13 and enrolled at Munsang College in Kowloon City.

He worked at his uncle’s Chinese restaurant while attending Munsang College and gained knowledge of the traditional Chinese barbeque technique.

He left Hong Kong after receiving his certificate from the Overseas Institute of Cookery to pursue further education in Canada. Yan earned a Master’s degree ten years after arriving in North America.

In the 2005 Singapore/Hong Kong film Rice Rhapsody, Yan plays one of the lead roles. He backed and approved the creation of the World Association of Master Chefs in 2007.

He has made appearances on the Iron Chef America and the Food Network as a guest judge.

His future wife Susan Yoshimura, who was from Yuba City, California, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences in 1975.

2015 saw Colin, one of their identical twin boys, get a bachelor’s degree in exercise biology from UC Davis.2

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