YEUNG KOON-YAT, a famous chef from Hong Kong known as "abalone king," showed off his skills at Shenzhen's Prince Restaurant on July 12.

Yeung was actually on a demonstration tour throughout China. After Shenzhen, he will go to Shantou, Xi'an, Lanzhou and Wenzhou. In September, he will go to France to demonstrate his abalone cooking art to French President Jacques Chirac.

Yeung opened his first restaurant, the Forum Restaurant, in partnership with his friends in Hong Kong in 1974. After he established himself as the "abalone king", Yeung set up over a dozen Chinese restaurants across the world in joint venture. His restaurants are in such cities as Sydney, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing and Shanghai.

Yeung said that his Forum Restaurant in Hong Kong was worth more than HK$40 million (US$5.13 million). Therefore, someone estimated that his shares in all the aforementioned restaurants were worth more than HK$200 million.

Yeung was born in Shanghai in 1932, although his parents were from Zhongshan, Guangdong Province. His father was a schoolteacher and earned a meager salary, so Yeung knew poverty in his childhood.

When the Pacific War broke out in 1941, his parents divorced. When his father re-married, his mother left Yeung and his two younger sisters at her mother's home. After that, the siblings were sent to their paternal grandmother in Guangdong.

But his grandmother was too old to get enough food for the three siblings and they were sent into an orphanage sponsored by a Catholic church.

An orphanage in wartime could provide the children no more than a bowlful of porridge a day. Sometimes the children could only drink water to fill their stomachs.

His two sisters died of the miserable life, and Yeung returned to his grandmother's home at the age of 16. The old woman gave him HK$50, some old clothes and asked him to go make a living in Hong Kong.

Having experienced starvation, what Yeung was concerned about most when he arrived in Hong Kong was finding a job that would allow him to eat -- he became a dish washer in a restaurant.

As a dish washer he had to get up at 4:00 a.m. every day and worked until 11:00 p.m. He was so tired he seldom took off his clothes to sleep.

Yeung aspired to have a better job. Three years later, he transferred to another restaurant and became a waiter, wearing a uniform.

He worked as a waiter for about eight years and accumulated enough experience to get a job as a restaurant manager.

Hong Kong's catering industry entered into a boom season in 1974. Like many other ex-restaurant-employees, Yeung used all his saving and opened his Forum Restaurant in partnership with some other investors.

Three years after Yeung became a boss, Hong Kong experienced its most devastating stock market crisis, which resulted in a local recession. Many restaurants in the territory closed their doors.

Yeung tried his best to keep his business afloat. Sometimes he did not make enough money to pay his employees and the rent. To add fuel to flame, his main chefs left the Forum Restaurant in 1980, putting his business on the brink of bankruptcy.

At the end of his rope, Yeung had to rolled up his sleeves and did the cooking himself. He attracted a lot of derision at first, but he remained unmoved.

At this time Yeung had a unique belief that he could only make an effective breakthrough with abalone, ginseng, bird's nest or shark fins, the four most expesive types of Chinese food.

He selected abalone as his aim and wanted to become famous as an abalone master cook.

Yeung debuted his abalone at his Forum restaurant in 1983 and won positive response. Two years later he went to Singapore and participated in a food festival there. He demonstrated his cooking skills at the festival and his abalone was liked by every one who tasted it.

Yeung earned instant fame with wide coverage of the local media. Since then, he has been known as "the abalone king".

A report says that Yeung became famous because of Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China's reform policy.

He was invited to Beijing in 1986 to instruct the cooks of China's State leaders. He passed his abalone cooking skills to a chef surnamed Ma. The chef later not only won a championship in a nationwide cooking contest with what he had learned from Yeung, he even cooked abalone for Deng Xiaoping to the latter's praise. Deng reportedly said after eating the abalone: "To eat abalone like this, we must accelerate our reform and opening to the outside world."

Deng's praise of Ma's abalone was published by newspapers in both the mainland and Hong Kong. Then the media found Yeung as Ma's trainer in the background. Subsequently, Yeung got more acclaim. Yeung later said that the media frenzy about him and Ma was worth of more than HK$100 million in advertisement.

Yeung went on a whirlwind of cooking demonstration throughout Asia from 1987. He set a record during his visit to Taipei in 1990. He helped sell 1,500 abalones within a week with his demonstration in a local restaurant.

"Abalones are categorized in different grades with a large range of prices. The larger an abalone is, the more expensive it is. And price for a single abalone varies from 300 yuan (US$36.14) to 30,000 yuan," Yeung said, adding that the abalones he had cooked were mostly high-quality ones.

In 1992, Yeung had a demonstration session in a deluxe hotel in Hong Kong. The hotel charged each guest 10,000 Hong Kong dollars for admission. Surprisingly, the 350 seats were quickly reserved. And such Hong Kong celebrities as actors Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat were among the guests.

Yeung has won many awards in France, U.S. and other countries. The award he has taken most pride in is "one of the top eight chefs in the world" he won in France.

Yeung has cooked for over a dozen state heads throughout the world. After Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien ate his abalone, he signed in Yeung's guest book with "Mr. Yeung Koon Yat, with my best wishes." The last British governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten said Yeung's abalone was the best he had eaten.

These days, Yeung is lobbying for a grading system for chefs in Hong Kong. He said: "With a grading system in place, every chef will be differentiated from the others. With such a distinction, then every chef will have to maintain a certain standard when he prepares dishes."

He said without such a grading system, a businessman looking for opportunities in the food industry might end up employing the wrong people and could easily sustain financial losses.

Like many others, Yeung has had more concerns about food hygiene in Hong Kong as well as in the mainland since the SARS outbreak. He observed that in many circumstances, the government's work ran into conflict with the industry people.

"The government always has the desire to maintain a clean environment and good food hygiene. But the government mainly exercise control through imposing fines," he said. "However, if the government relies on punitive measures, simply handing out fines to regulate the industry, it would end up in such a situation where the industry people would say 'Punish us as you may, we'll just do what we like'".

At a recent industry meeting in Hong Kong, Yeung adamantly appealed for more communication between industry people and the governmental administrators. "Only in that way can we work together to raise the hygiene standards and protect the health of the citizens," he said.

Editor: Wings