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I don't know where you were on Jan 20, but I can tell you where I was: at a Jenny Lou's market in Beijing, with my nose pressed firmly against the bright glass of the cheese cooler.
I couldn't smell a thing, really, but I inhaled mightily with the same pleasure I'd feel later when the chunk of Camembert before my eyes was safely home.
Jan 20, in case you don't know, is National Cheese Day in my home country, the USA. To be honest, I lived there for more than 50 years without knowing such a day existed.
But now that I'm in China, where cheese is not everyday fare, I seek out opportunities to go a little cheese crazy.
It all started at this very same cheese counter about five years ago. I had been in China for a few weeks, feeling quite scornful of some fellow foreigners who seemed to fetch every meal at a Subway sandwich shop or the Ikea buffet or from the Western-food packed grocery markets in expat districts. Why did these sad devils just stay home, I wondered?
I was such a reverse snob, in fact, that I didn't set foot in such a market for the first three months I lived in China. Dan-dan noodles? Mapu tofu? Yunnan-style hotpot? Bring 'em on, baby!
Then one morning, I sat up in bed, wide-awake with an urgent craving.
I had to have cheese. Real cheese. Right now.
I grabbed a quick cup of tea, and then fled to Jenny Lou's. My first sight upon walking in the side door: a magnificent wheel of Camembert, my favorite soft French cheese.
I literally knelt on the floor, causing great merriment after the folks around me realized I wasn't having a stroke.
There have been other cheese epiphanies. On an SAS flight to Copenhagen, I couldn't stop eating the cheese (and fresh bread and butter) that the amused attendants kept circling by with.
But the best cheese moments have been local. Not only is cheese from Denmark, France and New Zealand available in "Western" markets, but some enterprising Chinese are making some pretty good cheese, too. Pekin de Fromage, a cheesemaker here in the capital, for example, makes brie so good that it now appears on Beijing's finest restaurant tables. Yunnan chefs didn't wait to be inspired by Western cuisines: they've been making goat cheese for as long as they've been herding livestock. Paired with ham and Chinese sausage, it's a simple gourmet delight.
Perhaps America's National Cheese Day struck a chord because I just happened to see the Green Bay Packers football team on TV that week. Fans of that team, in the dairy-proud state of Wisconsin, are affectionately known as "Cheeseheads" - a moniker they've embraced by wearing huge yellow triangles of foam that look like wedges of cheese on their heads at games.
My cheesiest moments haven't driven me quite that far. But you may find me kneeling on the floor again at a Chinese cheese counter on Oct 29. That's World Cheese Day.
The author is a food writer for LIFE of China Daily
