Working at My Chinese Home Kitchen

We started My Chinese Home Kitchen to enable Jing to earn enough money to attend culinary school.  In our own way, we seek to apply the ideals of John Mackey’s “Conscious Capitalism”: business serves a higher purpose by focusing on stakeholders (investors, workers, and the community), through servant leadership, to create an environment where humans can grow to reach their full potential. In plain speak, talent must be developed and nurtured, and this requires the freedom to make mistakes and pursue new ideas. Many businesses seek to hire the most experienced talent. By contrast, we focus on human potential and create opportunity where that potential can develop.

She was orphaned as a teen and forced to drop out of high school to work in a factory. Through her work on My Chinese Home Kitchen, she has earned enough money to pursue her dream of becoming a Chinese Chef. She serves as our Website Editor, and develops most of the content on the site, while studying full-time at New Oriental Cooking School.  

Learning to Swim by Jumping into the Deep End 

Creating a blog like this is a first for both of us. We have both been challenged to learn new skills, and it has been great fun working together. 

Remote collaboration 

Jing lives in Anhui province, in China, and I live in central Texas in the United States. This poses many obstacles, not the least of which is a 13-hour time difference. Not being able to work side-by-side is the greatest challenge. We compensate for this by working in Microsoft Teams, with video chat and screen sharing, and collaborative authoring in the same document.

Without MS Office, Teams on the front-end, and SharePoint with OneDrive synchronization on the back-end, our project would be impossible. Our work is shared through OneDrive and SharePoint. Our recipes and articles start out written in Word. These are saved on the local PC, mine, or Jing’s, in a folder synchronized by OneDrive with the SharePoint server. In this way, we both see the same content at the same time. When Jing writes a new recipe in Word, it appears on my laptop. When I translate the content from Chinese and leave comments about words that do not translate clearly, Jing sees my comments immediately. 

Working with Teams allows us to do video conferencing and share screens. In addition, we can take control of each other’s laptops remotely. This is very useful when helping one another to learn new software, such as WordPress and its many plugins.  

A Chinese culture and cooking site 

Jing had never worked in web site development or commercial publishing. For her, the idea that anyone would want to read something that she wrote was unimaginable. She had never had a job where she was allowed to plan her own schedule or work without supervision. Jing has a lot of intelligence, and a great deal of natural talent. She only lacked opportunity, and the freedom to learn by making mistakes. 

Learning by doing involves making mistakes. Since Jing’s passions are cooking and Chinese traditions, it made sense to choose these as the focus for the site. This gave us a familiar subject to use as the basis for learning about web publishing and digital media. 

My background is in technical documentation and publishing. I understand publishing and editorial workflows, content strategy, and project management. I also have extensive experience with digital photography and video. We coach one another: Jing is teaching me how to cook Chinese cuisine, and I am teaching her professional and technical skills. We coach one another.

Developing recipes 

Jing develops all the recipes on My Chinese Home Kitchen. Some she knows, others are family recipes, or adaptations of family recipes. Several are dishes she has had a banquet or a restaurant. Jing has an amazing talent for creating a recipe from a memory of the taste. 

As her talent and confidence have progressed, she has begun to develop some of her own recipes too. 

The photography and video work are also entirely Jing’s work. I make the montage videos.  

One of our earliest obstacles was that Jing did not have a camera, good lighting, or any training in photography. Fortunately, I do. So, we used Teams again, and I taught her how to use natural light from a window to light food for a good photograph. There are no strong shadows or blown highlights when the light is diffused like that.  

In July, we purchased a DJI action camera for her. She has shot one video for the website so far.  

Teamwork for translation and publishing 

I work full-time Monday to Friday at a regular job. I work on this website nights and weekends. Working nights has one advantage: my nighttime is Jing’s morning. However, now that she has started school, she is no longer free in the morning. 

Jing develops her recipes by Wednesday each week. This includes the steps, ratios of ingredients, and the photos of each step.  

On Wednesday night, I begin the first translation into English. Sometimes it is challenging to figure out the translation. The most colorful was “spicy flower armor.” If it were not for the accompanying photo, I never would have solved this mystery. A clam, opening its shell when steamed, looks like an armored flower. That part of the mystery solved, I had to figure out what the real name of the recipe is in English. After much research and comparison, I finally settled on Spicy Clams with Black Beans.  

Assuming there’s no major confusion with translation, I also do the draft post in English, and run SEO analysis on the text and photos. I do make changes to the original text when necessary to place key phrases in the content for better search results. I try to keep this to a minimum, however, because I like Jing’s writing style.  

Do what you love 

The saying goes that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life. Working with Jing on My Chinese Home Kitchen feels like that. I enjoy the food and learning to cook in a new way.  

The best aspect is the mature friendship that has grown between the two of us. We are separated by half a planet, and two vastly different cultures. Sometimes, cultural misunderstandings have caused real difficulties, but the friendship and trust helps us through these difficulties.  

As much as I am passionate about this website, the thing I find most satisfying is being able to help Jing. She’s a special young lady. She has a lot of courage. She faced a lot of hardships early in life, but she has kept a positive attitude no matter how difficult her circumstances. We are all born with certain talents and strengths, but true talent is developed through learning and practice and the freedom to make mistakes. Most importantly, being able to own one’s success–to look at something and say “I did that”—is vital to building confidence and judgment.  

Jing is now pursuing her dream. When we met, just over a year ago, that dream seemed forever impossible. She is only the 6^th woman to attempt to take the Chinese Chef course at her school. In China, being a Chinese Chef is a job reserved for men. The training is physically demanding, too. She is pursuing what she loves, with a lot of courage. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.   

Funding My Chinese Home Kitchen 

This project is privately funded from my personal earnings at present. This does pose some challenges. The payoff is creating opportunity for Jing and her surviving family and bringing joy and hope into her life. To finish her education and establish her career, she will need support for another two years.  

We are considering ways to monetize our site, such as adding a subscription or donations option. We are also considering affiliate marketing. All these options are dependent on building a large enough following.  

Your support is much appreciated. Please consider sharing this site with your friends. 

Jing and I have discussed expanding My Chinese Home Kitchen, through our company CYGE Group, LLC, to help other women in her situation. There are many young women and single mothers in China facing the same economic challenges that Jing has experienced. Each case is different but providing a means for these women to improve their circumstances through work that provides skill development while earning a living wage is very appealing to both of us. 

Migrant workers in China 

One thing that surprises many westerners is the migrant worker phenomenon in China. Families are registered in their home provinces. Often, parents from rural provinces must migrate thousands of kilometers to larger cities to find work. They are considered migrant workers, because they live in a province where their families are not registered. Many of these parents must leave their children behind, to be cared for by aging grandparents.

Tens of millions of children do not see their parents, except for once a year during the Spring Festival. Some of these children are educated in local schools, but many are not able to get an education. As grandparents age, they must learn to fend for themselves. In our modern world, education is essential. While we cannot support all of them, we have talked about how we might use CYGE Group and My Chinese Home Kitchen to help those whom we can reach.  

Please consider supporting us.  

Do you enjoy My Chinese Home Kitchen?

We enjoy sharing these authentic home recipes with you. To learn more about My Chinese Home Kitchen, please visit our About page.

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