Hold the cheese

BEIJING -- Price and prejudice might combine to keep the average Chinese away from the Pizza Hut that opened in Beijing yesterday.

Pizza means cheese, and cheese wrinkles Chinese noses.

The Chinese have a marked aversion to dairy products in general and to cheese in particular. To a sensitive Chinese nostril, cheese packs a powerful and unpleasant reek of spoiled milk.

"To us, cheese smells rotten," said one young woman when told the ingredients of pizza.

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