Yue-Sai Kan (Chinese: 靳羽西; Pinyin: Jìn Yǔxī; b. Guilin(桂林), Guangxi(广西), China, October 1, 1949) is a Chinese American television personality, author, entrepreneur, and humanitarian. People magazine named her "the most famous woman in China".
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Kan was born in Guilin (桂林), in China's southern province of Guangxi(广西), right before the founding of the People's Republic of China. She is the oldest of four sisters, and her father was a traditional painter. She moved as a young girl to Hong Kong, spending most of her childhood there, and then moved to Hawaii where she studied for a degree in music. She joined her sister in New York in 1972, becoming involved in public relations and television production work.
She has created a number of popular television series which are viewed by hundreds of millions of television viewers in the People's Republic of China. Her series, which are often bilingual in Chinese and English, link Eastern and Western cultures by exposing Chinese viewers to American subjects, and vice versa. Her Looking East series first aired in 1978 and ran for twelve years, the last two on the Discovery Channel.
On October 1, 1984, she hosted the first live broadcast from China to the West, on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China; the program was a co-production of American TV station PBS and China's CCTV network. The program brought Kan to prominence in China and led the Chinese government to offer her a new television series, One World. The twice-per-week program, which exposed Chinese viewers to cultures around the world, was the first-ever television series hosted by a Chinese American on national Chinese TV.
Her ABC TV documentary China Walls and Bridges received an Emmy award in 1989. Her other series include Mini Dragons and Doing Business in Asia. Her newest series, on which she interviews various North American and European celebrities and politicians, is entitled Yue-Sai's World, which airs throughout China. Kan's life and career straddle East and West as an author, a journalist, a TV host, a charity worker and an entrepreneur. Kan has been credited as being the first TV journalist to link East and West. Throughout her TV career, Kan has filmed in more than 25 countries.
Her 2006 TV series Yue-Sai's World introduced interesting stories from Western cultures, various celebrities and other phenomena to Chinese viewers. Usher, Catherine Deneuve, and Suze Orman were some of the guests on her 30-minute weekly show. "I know there are lots of programs around but they don't have depth. This will be a solid lifestyle program. I have a big team in the United States currently producing it," she said.
Since 2006, Yue-Sai Kan has been serving as Chairman of the Invitation Committee of the Shanghai International Film Festival. She single-handedly secured the attendance of many A-list stars, including Halle Berry, Catherine Deneuve, Liam Neeson, Andie MacDowell just to name a few. Her involvement has uplifted the status of the Festival to a true international level.
"Travel is important", she says. "Your knowledge is supplemented by what you see, sometimes through television, sometimes through travel. That's how I got to know so many great people around the world."
Yue-Sai Kan currently lives in Shanghai and New York.
In 1989, the Chinese government suggested that Kan establish a business in China, in order to strengthen foreign investment in China; it was believed that her celebrity status would ensure the company's success. She eventually founded, in 1992, Yue-Sai Kan Cosmetics Ltd., China's first major cosmetics company, and launched the YUE-SAI brand cosmetics. Kan has stated that she chose to start a cosmetics company due to a lack of cosmetics that were suitable for Asian skin tones. By 2003, the company was generating annual revenues of nearly 50 million US Dollars. The company was sold to L'Oréal, the world's largest cosmetics company, in May 2004, with Kan staying on as Honorary Vice Chairman of L'Oréal China.
Kan has written six books; They are One World, Yue-Sai's Guide to Asian Beauty, Etiquette for the Modern Chinese, How to Be a Beautiful, Healthy and Successful Modern Woman, The Chinese Gentleman, The Complete Chinese Woman.
She has worked with the charity organizations UNICEF and ORBIS International. She has also built five school buildings for poor children in her home city of Guilin.