Yan-kit So (13 July 1933 – 22 December 2001) was a Chinese food historian and cookery expert who lived and worked mainly in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

since the 1960s.

Career

So became known among a wider public for her commercially successful and critically acclaimed cookbooks, which contributed much to the popularization of

Chinese cooking Chinese cuisine encompasses the numerous cuisines originating from China, as well as overseas cuisines created by the Chinese diaspora. Because of the Chinese diaspora and historical power of the country, Chinese cuisine has influenced many o ...

in Britain. She joined the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery of Alan Davidson in 1981.P. Levy: "Yan-kit So (1933–2001)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford: OUP
Retrieved 13 July 2019.

Life

Born in

Zhongshan Zhongshan (; ) is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is now part of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen conurbation with 65,565,622 ...

, Guangdong province into the family of a tea merchant, Yin Moo So, she grew up in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, where she graduated from University with a degree in history, and went on to acquire a

DPhil A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. She was married twice, to a Chinese surgeon, Po Yat Iu, whom she divorced, and then to the American historian Briton Martin Jr, who died of a brain tumour in 1967 and with whom she had a son, Hugo Martin (born 1965). She died in London on 22 December 2001.

Works

*''The Classic Chinese Cookbook'' (1984) *''Wok Cookbook'' (1985) *''Party Eats'' (1988), with Paul Bloomfield *''Classic Food Of China'' (1992)

References

Chinese food writers 1933 births 2001 deaths Food historians 20th-century Hong Kong historians Writers from Zhongshan Historians from Guangdong Women food writers Women cookbook writers Chinese cookbook writers 20th-century Chinese historians 20th-century Chinese women writers Chinese women historians {{China-historian-stub