How-to-make Chinese food videos aimed at foreigners have turned this YouTuber into a star
- Mandy Fu’s Souped Up Recipes channel teaches viewers in English how to cook typical dishes served at Chinese restaurants
- A chicken fried rice recipe she uploaded back in 2017 has so far received almost 5 million views, with more than 4,000 comments
With her round face, long, straight black hair and square-framed glasses, Mandy Fu Manli looks just like the girl next door in China, but this hasn’t stopped her from becoming one of the most popular Chinese YouTubers internationally.
Fu, 28, found her recipe for success in bringing the secrets of Chinese cooking to the rest of the world from her kitchen in the US state of Florida, where she moved last year. While her instructions may be delivered in imperfect (but clear) English, her recipes – and her heart-warming smile – have won over amateur cooks worldwide and attracted more than 730,000 subscribers to her channel, Souped Up Recipes.
“When I first started, I never thought of having any big impact,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking of doing anything grand. I just wanted to do something I like.”
Fu’s goal in these videos – which are usually tagged “Better than takeout” – is to teach foreigners how to make authentic Chinese cuisine from scratch, using elaborate explanations and step-by-step instructions.
She is not a professionally trained cook, but started picking up cooking skills around the age of 10, when her parents worked long hours at construction sites while leaving her and her younger sisters at home in a mountainous area of Guangdong province in southern China. The responsibilities of feeding herself and her two sisters during the daytime fell onto the young girl’s skinny shoulders.
“At first I started with easy recipes like stir-fried vegetables and fried eggs, which I learned from my parents,” she says.