I want to be China's first cream Baroness

I have figured out why china has no cheese! I was told before we left Canada that cheese was expensive in China. I ate a lot of cheese at home in Canada. I used to buy those 1 kg bricks weekly. I used cheese every day. You know those commercials that say: "Want your kids to leave home? Stop cooking with cheese!"? Well that was me. I just love cheese of every kind. I could never have fathomed the degree of scarcity of my favourite commodity as I am experiencing in this obviously foreign country.

In Hong Kong we shop at local stores called Vanguard or Park and Shop (although there is no parking anywhere near this store…Typical of Chinese to say one thing and do another). The only cheese I find here is those little cow cheeses and "cheese food slices". You know the ones where you drop one and leave it under the fridge till the next time you clean under there and the cheese slice in the plastic cover is just old but not mouldy? It looks and feels like the plastic that it is. Those are the only cheeses that I find in the stores. Speaking of dairy, I have also looked around for cream. Real cream to put in my coffee. They have milk, fortified milk, calcium enriched milk, low fat milk and chocolate milk, but is there cream? No. Where the "h" is all the cream in this place. If I could find this repository of cream I could be a rich woman. I would make cream and cheese popular!

I had to go to a British specialty shop to find cream. There I found coffee cream, clotted cream, sour cream, you name the kind of cream, these  British people know their cream. They know that where there are cows and cow's milk there is cream! I like the Brits! But in Hong Kong regular people stores, not a chance! So no cream and no cheese…. hold it wait I have now found cheese! This week I have found cheese abounding! However it is not the edible kind.

In 10 days is the Harvest Festival. God knows why they would celebrate harvest when they have a 12 month growing season but whatever. Who am I to criticize a culture? Hey wait, I think I am just about to mock one; is that the same as criticizing? (I didn't know culture shock was gonna be so fun!) Anyway,  in our apartment complex they have decorated for this celebration. They have tacky sparkling lights, mesh pink bunnies, pinata goldfish and red lanterns abounding. There is gold and red and moon cakes and christmas lights all mixed together in the cheezy-est display you could muster in your wildest nightmare. I am literally ready to lose my lunch (or supper which corresponds to the time of day I see this display more accurately although it does not sound as good) each time I enter the recreation area lobby where they have the most poignant display so far.

So I must retract my statement about not finding cheese in China. There is cheese, I am told,  at all celebrations and this is just a first taste of the cheese to come. I have never seen cheesier decor. It is so cheesy it is hard to describe. I will try….. Barf.

Now if I could find the cream they are hoarding I could make some real cheese and these horrendous decorative outcroppings will become redundant because Hong Kong will have enough cheese without them. And I will be a rich baroness! with real cream in my coffee too!

Rochelle