Chinese restaurateur breaks Japanese cuisine stereotypes

While other kids pretended to be scientists or doctors in kindergarten, Wang Hui played chef.

Fast forward to today - the 42-year-old has recently opened his third restaurant, Hecai Japanese Cuisine, in Beijing.

Wang started to learn how to cook Japanese food at the Sino-Japanese Youth Exchange Center in 1993.

Ten years later, he was named the executive Japanese-cuisine chef of Grand Hyatt Beijing, a job he earned by competing with 64 other chefs for one month and kept for more than a decade.

He left the hotel to start his own Japanese restaurant in 2015, bringing his cooking experience and management knowledge with him.

"Even though I'm an investor now, I still think from a chef 's perspective in which I value diners' experiences the most," Wang says.

"I'm providing the best ingredients and won't use cheaper ones to make more profit. That's the baseline of a chef."