Gordon Ramsay, the marathon-running, profanity-spattering superstar chef, presents himself as a hard case, the culinary equivalent of the drill instructor, able to fit in 50 press-ups between searing the scallops. But he may well have met his match in Jian Wang.

Wang is 50 years old, looks 35 and is built like a chopstick. She came to Edinburgh in 1997 with her 12-year-old son, Yin, barely a word of English and the idea of starting a food business. Having a baby in her mid-forties didn’t get in her way — when Sophia was 20 days old, Wang strapped her to her chest and got back to work in her dumpling factory. There, she can be as formidable a boss as Ramsay in full flight. “I am,” she says, “famous for firing people.”

Today, 12 years after getting off the plane, Wang is cooking beside Ramsay for 50 celebrity guests in The F Word kitchen. Terrifying as this sounds, it’s almost a day at the spa for Wang, who still works six days a week in Chop Chop, the restaurant she runs with her husband, Roy King, and Yin.

She and Ramsay got along famously. Hardly surprising when they have so much in common. “I told him right away, ‘Everyone says you’re genius, just like me’. I always liked his programme. When he gets angry, I know what it’s like. I’ve been through that. Outside people don’t understand, they ask why is he going mad? But actually it is like that. It is very stressful.”

Chop Chop, an unassuming yellow-fronted property near Haymarket station on unlovely Morrison Street, is one of The F Word’s “best local restaurants”. Ten thousand people voted for 4,500 local eateries and 18 have made it on to the screen. Only two are Chinese. It is Wang’s first appearance on television and, while she enjoyed meeting Ramsay, she found the rest of the experience underwhelming. “It was okay, not like doing it in my own kitchen.”

Her route from Changchun, a vast manufacturing city in northeast China, via a 12-burner stove in Morrison Street to Channel 4 at prime time has been a hazardous one. Having worked in the family dumpling business at home, she came to Edinburgh to study at university, then start up on her own. After a quick scan of Scotland’s ready-made Chinese speciality provisions, she cut out the swotting and leapt straight in.

“I went shopping to research,” she recalls. “Immediately I thought, I will make huge money, nobody makes dumplings. I started right away.” Her husband jumps in with some context: “In China, in the supermarkets, there are aisles of chest freezers with many brands, many flavours of dumplings. They are as common as chips, as popular as noodles or rice.”

Whereas Scotland was a dumpling-free zone. No mainstream supermarket stocked them, and when Wang did find some in Chinese stores, the gap in the market appeared only wider. They were made in Holland and were dry, with the dough and filling combining unpleasantly in the mouth.

From a manufacturing unit in Liberton, Wang began her mission to convert Scotland to juicy, authentic north Chinese dumplings. But it was not as easy as she had imagined. Supermarkets were cautious.

“They thought,” says King, “that she was talking about clooties.” Her few early customers were Chinese. How could she convert the Scottish palate — familiar only with the Cantonese takeaway repertoire of lemon chicken, prawn crackers and beef with black bean sauce — to the taste of Changchun? Wang thought trade fares would be the place to start, but the first one she went to, in Glasgow, was aimed at the general public, not trade. This was disastrous in terms of orders, though great for confidence.

“Everybody loved them. They were all queuing to taste my dumplings. By 2pm, I had run out of samples.” At the next fair, in Birmingham, her dumplings were named the best new product at the show.

By this time Wang had met King. With his background in sales and marketing the business got off its knees. There were more trade fairs, more awards. P&O ordered the dumplings for its cruise ships. There was also the arrival of baby Sophia. And in 2006, before Sophia’s first birthday, while Wang was still breastfeeding, they started Chop Chop.

On paper, this looked like one of the bonkers ventures that has Ramsay howling profanities on his restaurant rescue show, Kitchen Nightmares. They opened at the end of January, the bleakest month for the hospitality industry. Days before they got the keys, Wang broke three fingers. Then the chef lined up to work with her in the kitchen lost the job before he even started.

“He came in to look at menu,” recalls Wang. “And he laughed at me. He said, ‘You cannot have this, you don’t have curry, you don’t have black bean’. So I am saying, ‘I’m sorry, we cannot work together. If you’re working for me, you have to listen to me’. He criticised everything, he thinks I’ve done it wrong because he wants to put on the old menu.”

Wang, with no experience of running a restaurant, was not to be budged. “This is why it’s just myself.” She and her bandaged paw opened the restaurant single-handedly. Literally.

It was not an overnight success. The uncompromising northeastern menu was not what most customers recognised as Chinese food. “People would come in and ask for chicken curry. I phoned my sister back in China and asked, do we have a curry? And my brother-in-law laughed and said ‘Yes, all the European restaurants have a lot of curry now. They are quite popular’. ”

King adds: “Once, when the Welsh were here for the rugby, a table came in. The lady was horrified. ‘You don’t do curry and chips? And you call yourselves a Chinese restaurant?’ They walked out.”

Brute economics forced Wang to compromise — a little — in the first months. So, in among the dumplings, noodles and fiery stews, there was a short list of “non-regional dishes”. But these came with a catch: if you ordered the chicken curry you got a free dumpling. And there were limits. No coffee, and certainly no chips.

By July, the restaurant was getting busy. During the festival it went into meltdown, and stayed that way. Chop Chop seats 72, although Yin, who runs the front of house, claims he can squeeze in 75 by rearranging the tables. He often does so. Wang, whose arms and hands bear the scars of long shifts, can juggle four pans at once.

These days her brand, Jian’s Chinese Dumplings, is on sale at Sainsbury’s. The line is soon to be rebranded as Chop Chop Chinese Dumplings, to take advantage of the restaurant’s growing reputation (and imminent TV exposure). A new chef is due to arrive from Wang’s home region and, if he meets the boss’s exacting standards, they might even get around to opening their long-awaited second branch in the capital.

After that, King has his sights set on Glasgow. Five restaurants in Glasgow would, he thinks, be the ideal number. This may take five years: Wang would rather go slowly and get it right. She is, after all, carrying the reputation of China’s northeastern regional cuisine on her slender shoulders.

The F Word with Jian Wang is on Channel 4, November 24, 10pm www.chop-chop.co.uk

Read more Scottish lifestyle stories

Explore Food & Drink

• Gordon Ramsay

• Heston Blumenthal

• Recipes

• Wine

• Real Food

• Drinks

• Anjum Anand

• Eating Out

• Video Recipes

Times Recommends

• Jane MacQuitty’s party wine
• Oliver Peyton's Christmas pavlova
• Blood orange cosmopolitan