Jing, at The Peninsula Beijing, is a celebrated Michelin-starred French restaurant serving modern French gastronomy with exceptional artistry and culinary flair. Paired with vintage wines from around the world and set in a secret garden, Jing creates unparalleled dining experiences for guests. Hailing from France’s Basque region, Chef de Cuisine William Mahi possesses an innate passion for seasonal ingredients. He draws inspiration from daily life to craft imaginative contemporary French delights imbued with layered flavours and textures that create an alluring sensory dialogue with nature’s generous gifts.

This year, Chef William transforms these classic French creations – embodiments of friendship, terroir and vitality – into elemental works of art. His pieces trace each ingredient’s journey from the soil to the table and back to nature. Utilising natural pigments derived from the ingredients and materials in his kitchen, his art echoes a personal reverence for nature and reflects a steadfast commitment to sustainable gastronomy.

Six original artworks are now displayed throughout Jing’s dining spaces, enabling guests to enjoy pioneering culinary experiences that harmoniously blend Chef William’s gastronomic skills and visual aesthetics.

Wine

At the heart of this piece lies a gnarled, desiccated vine shoot meticulously positioned at the canvas’s centre. Its tangible texture and three-dimensional presence as a physical element project forcefully from the two-dimensional plane. Scattered upon it are several vine leaves, tendrils and stones – each one preserved in its naturally fallen state, lightly adhering to the rough bark to create a delicate equilibrium. The weathered umber patina speaks of seasonal transitions and life’s sedimentation. The chromatic shift from verdant green to autumnal yellow in the leaves appears to capture the sun’s final warmth and the life cycle persisting beyond moisture’s retreat.

The canvas itself employs an understated palette: muted oatmeal tones gently intermingle with washes of ginger-yellow applied with soft brushstrokes. Eschewing excessive colour, it exudes a warm, neutral embrace. The judicious space invites contemplation, while the spare composition – foregrounding the withered vine’s form – holds profound natural narrative and philosophical weight, compelling the viewer to meditate upon this beauty in decay and sense life’s cyclical rhythm and poetry within the stillness.

Chef William hails from France, where the terroir is the soul of gastronomy. The pairing of wine and cuisine represents a civilisational epic, co-authored by nature and humankind – an art form long elevated to a gastronomic totem within French culture. The creation of this artwork stands as Chef William’s tribute to the profound friendship between China and France. This bond, dating back to President Jacques Chirac’s historic state visit to China in 1997, now finds physical embodiment in the Franco-Chinese Estate nestled in Huailai, Hebei near Beijing. Here, the purity of French grape varietals is preserved while honouring the vineyard’s natural rhythms dictated by the land.

Chef William personally sourced materials from China’s pioneering Sino-French winery. Employing vine shoots, leaves, stones and soil, he artfully interweaves and layers these elements to trace the grape’s natural cycle from youth to decline. This serves as an homage to the vignerons whose passion and expertise harmonise with the land, working in rhythm with the vine’s life cycle. The piece embodies the interconnectedness of friendship, terroir and life itself. It conveys Chef William’s reverence for nature’s rhythms and ancestral wisdom, alongside his unwavering exploration and embodiment of the art of cooking – and indeed, the art of living. More than an artistic statement, this work stands as a cultural monument to Franco-Chinese camaraderie—a testament to Chef William’s culinary diplomacy.

The Burnt Cabbage

Rendered primarily in charcoal black, white and a metallic silver sheen, these hues intermingle and bleed across the canvas. At the composition's heart is a charred cabbage, encircled by scattered remnants of spent carbon, as if awaiting a natural metamorphosis through controlled-temperature cooking. The scorched, curled leaves and the cabbage heart – tinged yellow with hints of green – create a striking contrast against the desaturated backdrop of black, white and grey. This interplay powerfully conveys the recurrent vitality inherent in nature.

This work draws inspiration from Chef William’s signature dish: Truffle-Infused Cabbage. It embodies his exploration of an ingredient’s intrinsic qualities and pursuit of essential flavours. He masterfully utilises the cabbage leaf’s inherent moisture; under sustained high heat, the leaves’ natural humidity and structure create a subtle smoked crust. This technique perfectly preserves the vegetable’s natural form, yielding a crisp texture and sweet notes. Finished with 20 grammes of black truffle and Jing’s house-made smoked sea salt, the delicate salinity amplifies the truffle’s distinctive aroma. The dish presents nature’s gustatory gifts through uncomplicated culinary artistry.

Comprising eight distinct layers, the work incorporates dried earth, clear water, charcoal and truffle powder. The centrepiece – a whole cabbage desiccated over three weeks – serves as an eloquent chronicle of its journey from growth to harvest, culminating on the dining table. Transformed into a totem of nature, it speaks to the understated elegance and profound beauty often overlooked within the seemingly simple. This piece stands as Chef William’s paean to the natural world and a poignant homage to those who respect nature and safeguard life’s fundamental truths.

The 52-Degree Egg

Positioned beneath a spotlight, the canvas features intermingling washes of off-white, pure white and primrose yellow, creating a warm, soft and fluid visual effect. This chromatic harmony and textural quality subtly evoke the delicate, faintly opaque and vitally potent liquid essence of a whisked raw egg, setting the ‘stage’ for the artwork’s focal point under the illumination. At the heart of the composition lie meticulously arranged eggshells, forming the work’s most poignant element. Ranging in hue from natural white to varying ochre tones, some shells retain their full oval form whilst others lie fractured into sharp, irregular shards. Amongst these intact and fragmented shells, chicken feathers are interspersed. The earthy brown, white and yellow plumes drift lightly or cluster gently, evoking the warmth of life and the suggestion of a nest, alluding to the nascent vitality once cradled within. As the spotlight falls upon the shells and feathers, their overlapping forms cast a startlingly distinct, silhouette-like shadow of a chick upon the canvas’s negative space. Through this clever interplay of natural materials and chiaroscuro, the piece narrates a profound tale of life’s inception, rupture and metamorphosis. Within its tender palette, it provokes contemplation on the coexisting fragility and resilience intrinsic to existence.

This work draws inspiration from Chef William’s signature dish: the 52°C Slow-Cooked Egg. Featuring a silky olive oil-confit yolk at precisely 52 degrees, accompanied by premium Spanish jamón and Périgord truffle, it achieves a harmonious balance of unctuous richness and refined flavour. Mere words scarcely capture the dish’s essence; its true splendour is known only to those who have savoured it. Chef William has meticulously refined this creation, continually reinvigorating it to deliver ever-more-exacting perfection.

Guided by a reverence for nature and a commitment to environmental stewardship, Chef William has transformed culinary artistry and sustainability into the ‘pigments’ of this piece. Eggshells, potato skins and truffle trimmings find rebirth as natural colourants, with common kitchen scraps reimagined and integrated to begin anew upon this singular ‘stage’.

The inclusion of chicken feathers poignantly stirs reflection on life’s origins and cyclical renewal. The work aims to champion environmental consciousness through art, advocating for reduced waste in professional kitchens. Each brushstroke and textural nuance pays homage to nature’s life-sustaining bounty, honouring both its producers and an unwavering dedication to sustainable practices.

The Shandong Tomato

On the canvas, a visual evolution unfolds from left to right: red tomato, deep charcoal grey, pure white and soft pale pink. The left side is dominated by vibrant red and charcoal, evoking fertile soil and ripened fruit, imbued with a sense of weight and the suggestion of culmination. The colours gradually transition and bleed towards the right, where the grey and crimson slowly recede, giving way to pale pink and clean white. This fluid gradient from dark to light, heavy to airy, creates a subtle sense of temporal flow and spatial depth. At the heart of the work, emerging subtly amidst the shifting background hues, lie rows of desiccated, curled crimson tomato skins and scattered seeds – plump or shrivelled and pale yellow in colour. Tenacious deep green or brownish stems stubbornly punctuate the composition, the final witnesses connecting the fruit to the vine. Together, these central fragments symbolising decay and potential, and the flowing background colours deepening to pale, construct a contemplative space exploring conception, ripeness, dissolution and the possibility of rebirth. The work not only displays the physical decomposition of the tomato but also, through the language of colour, narrates a visual poem about the ceaseless cycle of life's essence.

This piece draws inspiration from Chef William's summer dish: the tomato. Since its arrival in China in the 19th century, the tomato, cherished for its sweet-sour flavour and juicy flesh, has found its place in everyday life and in refined Western cuisine. Cultivated in the fertile fields of Shandong province, basking in the abundant summer sunshine and soil nutrients, the tomatoes are meticulously selected by Chef William after completing a 60-day cultivation cycle. A sauce is crafted from herbs, thyme, lime and lemon juice complemented by a homemade clear broth and raspberry vinegar made from fresh raspberries aged for ten days. The resulting sauce bursts with fruity aromas and perfectly balanced sweet-sour notes creating harmony on the palate.

To capture the natural cadence of the tomato from seed to ripeness, Chef William spent five months in meticulous experimentation. Every part of the tomato – skin, seeds, juice and stem – is fully utilised. These natural pigments, transformed through time like a slow, delicate 'processing,' became distinct textural elements on the canvas, each presented in its unique form.

The elements on the artwork, undergoing oxidation and pectin interaction, reveal seven layers of pigmentation that gradually permeate the canvas, presenting an organic tapestry of life. The work aims to express Chef William’s and Jing’s commitment to sustainability and their tribute to the vital rhythm of ingredients. Moreover, in the name of art, it conveys his relentless pursuit and exploration of culinary excellence and the multifaceted charm of French gastronomy.

The Yunnan Mushrooms

This piece is an exquisite reassembly and poetic expression of natural elements. Constructed as an installation from natural materials, it combines dried mushrooms of varied forms with damp moss and fresh maple leaves scattered to create a winding path brimming with untamed vitality. The contrasting textures of the dried fungi and moist moss simulate the rhythmic undulations and turns of a foraging trail. The background supporting this 'mountain path' is a balanced tapestry woven from the deep brown of mushrooms, warm off-white, cool slate blue and soft tan. A warm and serene visual aesthetic speaks of the forest's abundance and the cycle of life forming a tranquil, earth-toned abstract landscape. The subtly blended colours, built with delicate and fluid brushstrokes, blur the boundaries between still life, landscape and earth art, guiding viewers to discover and appreciate the structure and beauty within the earth’s bounty from a fresh perspective.

The work draws inspiration from Chef William's seasonal summer mushroom series: Yunnan. Reminiscent of his native Basque region in France in its microclimate and rich in rare ingredients, Yunnan is a treasure trove of fungi, providing endless creative inspiration for a skilled chef who excels in cooking with mushrooms.

Tracing the wondrous encounter with mushrooms, the piece utilises pigments made from porcini, enoki and morel mushroom powders, blended with the ashes of wood used for roasting mushrooms. Each layer delicately unfolds a foraging journey, vividly conjuring the damp forest humus, the dappled sunlight filtering through pine branches, and the earth's breath-like vitality before the viewer's eyes. Created with reverence and deep affection, this work is Chef William's tender tribute to nature's plentiful gifts.

Blue Lobster

This composition achieves a masterful resonance between structured aesthetics and organic creation, distilling marine poetry. Centrally aligned razor clam shells form a pristine horizontal axis – their slender, arced silhouettes arranged with geometric precision. Pearlescent lustre and sandy textures evoke sunlit shores, harmonising with the canvas’s beige-and-white washes. Subtle greys deepen the tableau like abyssal light, transforming order into a meditative portal to oceanic stillness.

Each shell in the composition is a microcosm of nature, with growth rings and tidal etchings mapping coastlines shaped by lunar cycles. The work is an evocative nod to Chef William’s upbringing on the Atlantic Coast, where he was inspired by the shellfish harvesters who braved fierce tides every day to gather their oceanic treasures.

The piece corresponds to Chef William’s signature wood-fired blue lobster, which he pairs with Prince Edward Island mussels to impart briny depth, and Laiyang-style oil-poached razor clams to lend refined delicacy. A creamy bisque, made from slow-reduced shells, meets spring peas’ crisp sweetness. The crescendo: Dalian spider crab’s sweetness, crowned with aromatic intensity from Changde oak embers – a timeless homage to flame-centric craft.