Cheesy habits offer insight to rapidly changing market

Talking cheese can be an emotional thing for some Chinese people. Once I saw a Chinese woman distressed at the mention of it, on an internet video blog.

From her remarks it seems some European men are less than culturally sensitive when faced with a plate of chicken's feet, while the woman, for her part, was openly uncomfortable at the prospect of a partner consuming cheese, particularly those boasting richly pungent odors, like mature camembert.

Though a China "newbie" freshly off the plane in Beijing, I thought I had the necessary research before arriving. It involved in part watching hundreds of hours of video blogs by Chinese and expats in China and I believed I knew where things stood when it came to cheese.