Cecilia Chiang, the Shanghai-born restaurateur who revolutionized the national food scene with her approach to Northern Chinese cuisine, died this week, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. She was 100 years old.

Born on September 18, 1920 to a wealthy family in Wuxi, Chiang was raised in Beijing in a 52-room mansion. During China’s war with Japan, Chiang and her sister, “disguised as peasants” (Saveur wrote in 2000) fled hundreds of miles to Sichuan. That was the first of many escapes