Elizabeth Chong

Early life Chong was born in Canton (known now as Guangzhou), China, to a Chinese mother and Australian-born father of Chinese descent, whose father had arrived in Australia to the 1850s. She has a brother (Tony) and a sister born in Hong Kong.

Her mother was told to leave the country under the White Australia Policy;

Her father William Yen Wing Young was a restauranteur from Melbourne, and operated a food processing plant called Wing Lees where he is believed to have created and marketed the most widely used modern recipe for the dim sim, (a dumpling similar to a Siu Mai) in 1945. Chong also states that her father created the first bean sprout factory in Australia.

Chong never aspired to follow the family tradition in the restaurant business, but rather to become a concert pianist or journalist. After a year of being a primary school teacher, she decided she wanted to teach the art of cooking.

Career Publishing and television Chong released her book The Heritage of Chinese Cooking in 1994, which won the Prix de La Mazille as International Cookbook of the Year.

Chong is best known for her television appearances on Good Morning Australia as well as her Chinese Cooking School (1960- 2016) and Chinese cookbooks including The First Happiness (first published in 1982).

In 2003, her TV series Elizabeth Chong's Tiny Delights aired with a companion book release of the same title.

Personal life Elizabeth's started her own cooking school in the late 1950s when she began teaching some of the mothers from her children's state school in the Melbourne suburb of North Balwyn. Her first home recipes were published by Belle Vue State School Mothers' Club. The Cooking School celebrated its 50-year anniversary in 2011. Apart from this, as an ambassador for Chinese culture in association with her cooking she gives guided tours of the Chinatown precinct in Melbourne