1/22/2024 0 Comments Fly by jing retailers![]() ![]() I was beginning to peel back the layers, but there was still more work to do.įly By Jing, in its current form as a spice and condiment company, was born out of a suitcase. This journey came to a head when I started an underground popup dining concept I named Fly By Jing: an ode to Chengdu’s famous ‘fly restaurants’- hole in the wall eateries so good they attract people like flies, and as a nod to my birth name - which I was just starting to reconnect with but still a bit uncomfortable responding to. I was finally starting to find my voice, with food as my medium. Like me, they were rooted in tradition, but also an evolution. I started to develop my own, deeply personal expressions of these flavors. When a culture doesn’t evolve, it dies, and I wanted to help push it forward. It felt terminal, and doesn’t allow a culture or its people to evolve. ![]() The idea of tradition and ‘authenticity’ never really sat right with me. I left my corporate job, opened a restaurant in Shanghai, studied Sichuan cooking with the masters, and tried to figure out my place in it all. I was stunned by the depth of this 5000 year heritage that no-one outside of China seemed to know about, and what started as a personal quest to reconnect w my roots soon became a passion project to shine light on this cuisine and culture. I delved deep into Chinese food culture and its regional cuisines, so varied and diverse it felt more like a continent. It’s no wonder my search for identity and heritage later in life brought me back to my hometown of Chengdu in China, where I’ve spent the last ten years finding meaning and my place in the intersection of food with culture, tradition, and modernity. Imagine burying all that, just to feel seen, just to belong. 玄 Xuan, my middle name given me by my nuclear-physicist father means profound, abstract, and is a homonym for his field of study - string theory. 婧 Jing, given to me by my late grandfather, means virtuous, feminine. ![]() I spent the last 25 years of my life hiding beh ind ‘Jenny’, a name I chose at age five to make life easier as a kid growing up in Europe. My name is Jing, but it hasn’t always been. ![]()
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