How long has your show been on the air and what’s in store for the next season?

The show has been on the air for 22 years. Actually, I was the first Chinese [person] to host a daily Chinese cooking show. We just finished 52 brand new Yan Can Cook Shows that will air next season. They’re called Yan Can Cook Asian Favorites. This year, we feature the great chefs of Hong Kong, the great chefs of Taiwan and the flavors of Thailand, for a total of 52 shows.

How did your show evolve? Did you start out doing just Chinese cuisine and then you branched out to other cuisines?

For years and years I only did Chinese cuisine. Now I get into all Asian food. I went to Japan and did a program on Japanese food. I did Yan Can Cook: The Best of Japan, Yan Can Cook: The Best of Malaysia, programs in Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and I hope to do a show on Indonesia and Cambodia.

How about all that great food in Australia?

I always wanted to do a show in Australia, but never pulled it off. Australia has a very large Chinese population, and also they're famous for seafood; a lot of seafood in Hong Kong actually comes from Australia. And also Australian chefs are very creative and they cook a lot of Asian food. A lot of the Chinese [communities] in Australia are like the Chinese [communities] in the U.S.; they immigrated to Australia a couple hundred years ago and they went over there to build the railroad and work in the coal mines, just like in the U.S., so there's a lot of similarity and synergy. The problem is, they're so far away. My next project will be Yan Can Cook’s Chinatowns Around the World. I will be filming, actually, all on location this year, and then in the studio next year, so it will air next year.

So in the past 22 years that you've been doing this show, how have you noticed Asian food in America changing?

First of all, five or ten years ago, you would hardly see any Occidentals coming to dim sum restaurants like these. Now there are always some. And look at what they order; they're not just ordering the typical chop suey, chow mein stuff any more. They're ordering a lot of very traditional, interesting dishes. You see the way they use chopsticks; this only happened in the last few years. I hope I have made a small contribution towards this kind of interest in Asian cuisine.

Do you think Americans are finally able to tell the difference between different types of Asian cuisines?

I think people should give more credit to the general public about their understanding of cuisine, more so than before. It's no longer just hamburgers and spaghetti for this generation. I mean, there are a lot of Thai restaurants, Vietnamese restaurants, Cambodian restaurants, and recently in New York they have Penang, that Malaysian-Singaporean restaurant. So all of a sudden you see a proliferation of a lot of these things, because we travel all over and we introduce a lot of these things.

Why do you think Chinese food is so popular in the U.S.? Even the smallest town in middle America has a Chinese restaurant.

Not only a Chinese restaurant, but also Asian stores, and that's important because if you want to cook, you've got to have the ingredients. 15 or 20 years ago, you'd hardly see any Asian ingredients in the supermarket. Now, you go to the supermarket, there's an Asian section. If you go to a mainstream supermarket in Los Angeles, an entire aisle is Chinese, another aisle is Japanese, and another aisle is Thai. You know, you can buy everything you need to cook Asian food: all the seasonings, a variety of noodles, including rice noodles, cellophane noodles, ramen noodles, even buckwheat noodles. You can buy plum sauce, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, different kinds of soy sauce: light soy sauce, dark sauce, mushroom soy sauce, regular soy sauce, fish sauce. Even McCormick makes five spice powder now. Anything that you can find in Chinatown you can find in some of the [mainstream] supermarkets.

Has this availability changed the recipes that you can do on your show?

I think it's not only changed the recipes, but it also gives me the opportunity to do more recipes. When you don't have the ingredients, you can't do certain things. But now, with all the ingredients, all the seasonings, you can go do anything.

You use food as an entry point to talk about culture at large. Why do you think food is such an apt entry point?

I think my show, like the Asia Society, basically promotes Asian culture, and food is a very integral part of the culture and history and lifestyle. Somebody said that to understand one's culture, you start with food, because food is less controversial. Everybody has to eat.

What's the difference between Chinese food in the United States and Chinese food in China?

I think if you had asked this question ten years ago, there woul have been a lot of difference. But nowadays, when you come to Chinatown here, you've got Shanghai restaurants, you've got Hong Kong restaurants, you've got restaurants specializing in dumplings. You've got restaurants specializing in different things. 10 or 15 years ago, it was very different. You know, Chinese food in China is very traditional. Now we see food in New York as just as good or better than Hong Kong. I think this is very interesting and it’s because of supply and demand. More and more American people are going to Asia and there are more people coming over here from Asia.

But one difference is, in America, everybody loves big bok choy, big Napa cabbage. Everything is big. In China, everything is small because everybody knows the smaller, the more delicate, the more tender.

Who taught you how to cook?

I was born and raised in a restaurant environment. Before I was born, my father had a restaurant in China, in Guangzhou. The Communists had already taken over. He became a manager, and I'd hang around the restaurant all the time. And then my mother ran a corner store, selling groceries, so even when I was growing up, I got to know what the dish looks like. I learned all about hoisin sauce. In China, they don’t sell hoison sauce in a jar. They sell it in big ceramic jugs. There still are stores like that, and when you buy wine or oil, you bring your own bottle.

According to Chinese customs, why shouldn't you leave any rice in your bowl?

The reason is China is an agricultural society. There are a lot of people, and not enough food. So every single grain is precious. So even throughout China they always have a saying, and try to educate the kids not to waste food, not even a single grain, because even a single grain contains a lot of sweat and a lot of hard work from the farmer. When you'd go to elementary school, they have a poem to teach kids not to waste food. If you waste anything, if you have any grain left in your rice bowl, you will marry a lady who is freckled, a freckled-face lady. The more rice left, the more freckle-faced the lady you're going to marry. That’s why we don't leave rice in the rice bowl, and that's the reason why I never leave any single grain of rice in my rice bowl. That's the reason why I married a woman with a beautiful complexion.

So to what do you attribute the success of your show, and Asian cuisine in general?

First of all, I don't really claim the Yan Can Cook Show has been very successful. We have been fortunate. But I think the availability of ingredients and the influx of new immigrants has made a difference, as well as the globalization of the economy, and global travel. A lot of American people travel all over the place, and it brings a lot of the culture, the cuisine to the U.S. Also the chefs in California or the chefs in New York set the trends. They bring in new things. So I think in many cities, the creativity, the imagination of the chef also helps to popularize Asian food. Hopefully, the Yan Can Cook Show has made a small contribution to this, because a lot of people watch the Yan Can Cook Show.

Who is your audience?

Ever since the Yan Can Cook Show started, it has always had a very wide, very diverse audience. We have people of all ages, all ethnic backgrounds. A lot of Chinese watch the show. A lot of Asians watch the show, and we also have a lot of people of all social and ethnic groups who watch the show, so the Yan Can Cook Show is very unique. We cover travel, lifestyle, and religion. The Yan Can Cook Show is a combination of travelogue and cooking with on-location filming. It’s one of the very few cooking shows that travels all over. We don't just go to restaurants; we go to the temple. We cooked on top of the Great Wall. The Great Wall was built to ward off attack from the Mongols, and we used that as a setting to cook Mongolian hotpot. We also did an imperial banquet in the Imperial Palace, in the Forbidden City. We do a lot of those things and they are very interesting.

Have you been to the other Chinatowns in the New York area?

Brooklyn has a Chinatown, and Flushing has a Chinatown. Different areas have slightly different concentrations of certain restaurants. Flushing has a very high percentage of people from Taiwan, so they have a lot of Taiwanese restaurants. Taiwanese cuisine is also very unique, because Taiwan is a miniature China, and people from all over China went to Taiwan. In food courts in Taipei, you've got cuisines and snack food and street food from all over China. If you go to China, you have to go all over China to see that. In Taiwan, it's more concentrated, so it's actually a very unique place. And also because Taiwan was colonized and occupied by the Japanese for 60 years, so you have a lot of Japanese influence, too. The Japanese stuff is also very good in China. A lot of people from Taiwan speak Japanese.

But in New York, things are changing, just like the Yan Can Cook Show has changed. In the past, I only did studio cooking. I didn't travel. And then as the Yan Can Cook Show evolved, we did a lot of traveling. We travelled all over Southeast Asia, all over China, and one of the series we did was Yan Can Cook: The Best of China, and then the Yan Can Cook: The Best of Asia. Now, the Yan Can Cook: Asian Favorites. This year we're featuring The Great Chefs of Hong Kong, The Great Chefs of Taiwan, and The Great Chefs of Thailand, and all of this ethnic food is also getting very popular.

Can you tell us a little bit more about your Chinatown special?

You probably know that Chinatown is kind of losing its luster in many cities. It's simply because a lot of the stores and a lot of restaurants are moving away, so Chinatown is no longer becoming a focal point. But Chinatown, by far, is still one of the most attractive places for tourists to have a cultural experience. A typical store in Chinatown here is very different from going shopping for the same thing in the supermarket. I like to feature the very best of Chinatown, and we will highlight how the Chinese and Asians in general have made contributions to the society, and how they bring things to the American palate, and how Chinese food has become so mainstream. And I just wanted to do a little more about Chinatown and talk about the history, why different people go to Chinatown and gather there, and I want to give some historical background. So we will have a scene in a Chinese restaurant explaining how to order, how to eat, and what they should watch out for. We will also talk a lot about celebrations and symbolic food for celebrations. So we will feature a lot of culture and a lot of history. We're going to feature Chinatowns in London and hopefully Havana, Saigon, Singapore, Sydney, Yokohama. There's a big Chinatown in Tokyo and Yokohama, and also Vancouver and Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, New York. New York is an exciting place. If I could ever make enough money and afford it, I would move to New York. Now I'm still working very hard and trying to save enough money to move to New York.

What’s the best part of your job?

The good thing about our business is we travel all over the world. We meet interesting people, and they like to come over here, and everybody's smiling, everybody has a good time, and it's not work. This is fun and games. Every day is a pleasure for me. I've been doing what I do for years, and I'm passionate about what I do, and you have to have that passion and love. Like my good friend Julia Child has been doing it for years and years, and she turned 88, and she's still doing what she's doing. I think I'll continue to do what I do because I love it. And I love to teach. I love to share and I love to give lectures.

So what are your all-time favorite dishes? What do you recommend when people go to a restaurant to order?

Most chefs, as cooking professionals, like to eat something very light. They normally don't like something too fussy or expensive, because they work all day, they smell the food all day and they look at the food all day. All they want is something simple. What I normally do when I go out, I like to have more steamed dishes and casserole dishes than deep-fried or stir-fried dishes, because I know there is a lot less oil. And also, I love steamed fish. I love to eat things that are natural. I don't like to have something too rich, too spicy. But I think... when you go out to eat [you should] order one dish from each category on the menu. Never order too many from the same category, and then always order the variety, some steamed, some stir-fried, some deep-fried, some casserole; never [order] the same thing. Variety is the spice of life, and in Chinese cuisine there are so many varieties, so many different ingredients, different proteins, different vegetable combinations and different cooking techniques that the way to enjoy a meal is to order a variety.

Did you ever cook with Julia Child?

I have worked with her many, many times. I cook in her house with Jacques [Pepin]. We cooked breakfast for ourselves. One time Jacques and I went to visit her, and we’re always hungry. Julia said, "Oh, you're hungry? You cook it yourself." And Jacques and I were working in the kitchen. Julia lived in China for a while during the war. And also, Julia loves Chinese food, particularly dim sum. In fact I've been teaming up with her producer to do the Chinatown Cooks series. So it's going to be a very exciting opportunity for me.

Will the Chinatown video series also be a book?

Yes, there will be a companion book. Of course, one of my latest books is Chinese Cooking for Dummies, which is actually not only for dummies, because there's a lot of information. You look at all these "Dummy" cookbooks, there's a lot of information. It’s a very successful series.

So much food, so little time. Were you ever formally trained as a chef?

Actually, I was trained as a food scientist. I have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in food science, but I was recently also given an honorary doctorate degree in culinary arts, along with Julia Child, and I was very honored. I was actually the first Asian chef to receive that. Last year, during the millennium celebration, I was one of the three chefs who got invited to the Millennium Gala Party in Washington D.C. I was one of the three chefs who gave a seminar on the future taste of America, and then after that, we all got invited to go to the White House. I feel pretty good, because I didn't expect a guy like me, born and raised in China, to get a chance to go to the White House.

What do you think of the Iron Chef?

The Iron Chef is great. I was joking with people, the reason why you don't see me on the Iron Chef is because the producer of the Iron Chef probably asked him not to invite me because I cut my chicken so fast, by the time I finish the whole meal, they're probably still working on the first dish. But anyway, I hope one day they'll invite me.

How has the Food Network changed cooking shows?

Now it's a lot of entertainment. It's entertainment, and they want numbers. If you look at the Yan Can Cook Show, it used to be very different. I'd go very crazy, very high energy, animated.... Now I've toned down and I've calmed down a lot more, and I make it more culture-oriented. I still try to maintain the same energy, but now I educate. I put an emphasis on the education and the background, the heritage and the tradition of a dish.

Do you think that the San Francisco Chinatown has evolved in the same way that New York's has, or are they pretty different?

I think New York is more dynamic, because New York has a lot more new immigrants coming. It has a lot more job opportunities. You see, Chinatown, here, is always moving, and there’s a lot of energy throughout the day, throughout the week. Chinatown in New York is probably the largest now, along with Toronto. London's Chinatown is very interesting, but I don't think it is as dynamic, because very few people live in London's Chinatown, as compared to Chinatown here. The reason why Chinatown in San Francisco and Chinatown in New York are so unique is because a lot of people actually live right here, so you have a lot of local people shopping. You see elderly ladies, elderly men, they shop all day long. They love to shop. They love to pick up different foods and things. So I think it's a very unique thing. That's why I love to come to the New York Chinatown, because you walk around town and you feel like you're somewhere in Asia.

To find out more information on Martin Yan, visit AsianConnections.com.