Wild Ginger founding chef Jeem Han Lock dies at 90

You could take chef Jeem “Jim” Han Lock out of the kitchen, but his head “never left the game.”

“Every time we would visit him, he was on his laptop writing recipes,” says his son, Jason Lock.

Lock, the James Beard Award-winning chef and founder of Wild Ginger, died peacefully on Nov. 22, surrounded by his family at the age of 90.

Born Nov. 16, 1935, in the Gim Shek Village of Taishan, a city in the Chinese province Guangdong, Lock immigrated to San Francisco in 1947, attending high school and some college in the Bay Area. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1954, serving at Camp Drake in Asaka City, Japan, as a specialist with the Overseas Central Signal Communications Center, United Nations / U.S. Army Forces Far East.

After being discharged, Lock traveled to Hong Kong, where he met his