Yan has opened a chain of Yan Can Restaurants and founded the Yan Can International Cooking School in San Francisco. He also hosts Martin Yan's Chinatowns, where he tours Chinatowns around the globe as well as 'Martin Yan's Hidden China.' He currently hosts Martin Yan – Quick & Easy. His shows have been broadcast in over 50 countries. He has hosted over 3,500 episodes of the PBS cooking show Yan Can Cook since 1982. 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).
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. He received a diploma from the Overseas Institute of Cookery of Hong Kong and later left for Canada for continued study. During this time in Munsang College, he worked at his uncle's Chinese restaurant and learned the traditional method of Chinese barbecue. When he was 13, he moved to Hong Kong, where he attended the Munsang College in Kowloon City. With ancestral roots in Hoiping, Yan was born in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China to a restaurateur father and a grocer mother. He has hosted his award-winning PBS-TV cooking show Yan Can Cook since 1982. Martin Yan ( Chinese: 甄文達 born 22 December 1948) is a Hong Kong-American chef and food writer.
