It's kind of like tofu

Inside a dimly-lit log cabin at the end of a gravel road, four young foreign investors eager to do business in China flip open their laptops on a roughly hewn wooden table. Tonight's presentation: the economics of yak cheese production.

Huddled around the table are the newly trained cheesemakers, ethnic Tibetans taking their first baby steps in China's brash market economy. Brows furrowed, they follow the flow charts and pricing data in the light of a single bare bulb...

But is it really feasible to sell cheese to the Chinese?

Carol Chyau, the organization's CFO, smiles. "We've had Chinese friends who said that, then they tried the cheese in a Chinese recipe and they liked it," she says. "It's kind of like tofu."