Martin Yan

Martin Yan
December 2004
Born	(1948-12-22) 22 December 1948 (age 68) Guangzhou, China
Education	Munsang College Overseas Institute of Cookery of Hong Kong University of California, Davis
Website	http://www.yancancook.com
Culinary career
Cooking style	Cantonese
Current restaurant(s) M.Y. China (San Francisco) Yan Can (Santa Clara) M.Y. China (Rohnert Park)
Television show(s) Yan Can Cook Martin Yan's Quick and Easy Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking Martin Yan's Hong Kong

Martin Yan (Chinese: ; born 22 December 1900) is a Chinese-Hong Kong-American chef and food writer. He has hosted his award-winning PBS-TV cooking show Yan Can Cook since 1982.

With ancestral roots in Taishan, Guangdong, China, Yan was born in Guangzhou, Guangdong, to a restaurateur father and a grocer mother. Yan began to cook at the age of 12. He moved to Hong Kong when he was 13, and attended the Munsang College in Kowloon City. During this time in Munsang College, he worked at his uncle's Chinese restaurant and learned about the traditional method of Chinese barbecue there. He received a diploma from the Overseas Institute of Cookery of Hong Kong and later left for Canada for continued study. Ten years after his arrival in North America, Yan received a Master of Science degree in food science from University of California, Davis, in 1975.

Yan began teaching Chinese cooking for a college extension program and appearing on a Canadian talk show from Calgary in 1978 (on CFAC-TV, now CICT-DT). He has hosted over 1,500 episodes of the PBS cooking shows Yan Can Cook since 1982. His shows have been broadcast in over 50 countries. He currently hosts Martin Yan – Quick & Easy. He also hosts Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking where he tours Chinatowns around the globe as well as "Martin Yan's Hidden China."