Beijing Blue, Beijing Gray

No, we are not talking about the state of Beijing's skies. Instead, the colors refer to the names of French-style artisan cheeses hand-made in the Forbidden City. Sun Ye talks to a most unusual cheese maker.

He tasted his first soft French cheese at an orientation party thrown to welcome foreign students to Auvergne. It was very smelly, Liu Yang remembers, but it was also love at first bite. That was more than 10 years ago, and the affair has matured and aged into a career partnership.

He was in France to study business, but he ended up learning how to make cheeses, a craft he carried on practicing when he returned to Beijing. Le Fromager de Pekin is now popular among the city's expatriate population for its small but tastefully authentic selection of artisan cheeses, often given Chinese names such as Beijing Blue or Beijing Gray.

For such an established cheese maker, Liu keeps a modest store that also doubles up as utility space, and his production base along the city's eastern edge is decidedly low profile.

All the cutting, wrapping, tasting and socializing is conducted around a stainless steel table. There is another smaller table nearby where the trophies displayed are gifts from the cheese maker's fans and friends.

There are no more than five people employed at the fromagery, including the scholarly-looking, quietly-spoken boss and they all fit snugly into the little room.

Certainly, the room seems too small to hold in the cheese maker's ambitious plans, which includes sharing the culture of eating and enjoying cheese among his countrymen.

Apart from the herdsmen nomadic tribes to the north, most Chinese do not enjoy dairy products and some may even be lactose intolerant. But as the younger generations grow, their taste buds, weaned off designer-brand milk powders, seem to be appreciating cheeses more and more.

Liu is planning to launch a set of cheese making video courses that will help encourage true aficionados make cheese at home.