Cecilia Chiang

She walked 700 miles to escape the Japanese army. Then taught Chinese cooking to Julia Child and James Beard.

Cecilia Chiang grew up in a 52-room Beijing mansion.

Her family had two full-time chefs. One for northern cuisine, one for southern.

The kids weren’t allowed step into the kitchen.

But Cecilia sat nearby, soaking it all in.

She watched every dish being prepared.

She listened as her parents discussed technique and flavor.

In 1942, she fled the Japanese invasion, on foot.

She walked over 700 miles to Chongqing, living off gold coins sewn into her clothes.

Once there, she taught Mandarin at the U.S. and Soviet embassies.

She also became a wartime spy for the OSS.

She married Chiang Liang, a Shanghai businessman, and built a new life.

But in 1949, they fled again, this time from the Communists.

They escaped China on the last flight out of Shanghai.

She opened her first restaurant in Tokyo (Forbidden City) serving Chinese food to expats and Japanese locals.

In 1960, she came to San Francisco to help her widowed sister.

She had no plans to stay.

Until she ran into two friends trying to open a restaurant.

She helped negotiate their lease and wrote a $10,000 deposit check to secure the space.

They backed out. The landlord refused to refund her money.

So she opened The Mandarin, with zero restaurant experience, in a city that only knew greasy chop suey and chow mein.

She did everything herself: designed the space to look like her childhood palace, washed dishes, scrubbed floors, sourced ingredients from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and hired a Shandong couple to cook.

C.Y. Lee, author of The Flower Drum Song, became a regular.

Then Herb Caen, the city’s most powerful columnist, came in with Trader Vic.

And wrote that The Mandarin was “serving some of the best Chinese food on the Pacific East Coast.”

Lines formed outside.

She became the go-to for dignitaries, celebrities, and food legends.

Henry Kissinger, Mae West, Pavarotti, and the Beatles all ate there.

Julia Child, James Beard, and Alice Waters all learned Chinese cooking from her.

Williams-Sonoma founder Chuck Williams called her “a genius.”

In 1968, she opened a 300-seat Mandarin in Ghirardelli Square.

It became the only Chinese restaurant to win the Mobile Five-Star three years in a row.

In 1975, she opened a second location in Beverly Hills.

In the 1980s, she handed it off to her son Philip.

He co-founded P.F. Chang’s in 1993.

Another dynasty born from hers.

By the time she sold The Mandarin in 1991, her restaurant had introduced Americans to dishes like kung pao chicken, sizzling rice soup, and tea-smoked duck.

Real Chinese food, served with elegance, reverence, and pride.

She won the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award at age 93.

At 99, she told a crowd she believed in reincarnation.

And if she came back?

“I think I would still like to be in the restaurant business.”