The World's Oldest Cheese Is Chinese. So Why Doesn't China Eat Cheese?

The oldest cheese ever found was found in China. It was a 3,600-year-old kefir cheese buried with mummies in the Xiaohe cemetery in Xinjiang. Yet cheese never became part of everyday Chinese cooking. In this episode of Bitesize Science, Clara explores the genetics of lactase persistence, the ancient switch that let some herding peoples in Europe, Africa and the Middle East digest milk as adults, and why most East Asian adults did not evolve it. We follow the line that splits China into farmland and pasture, the Tang dynasty's love for dairy, the butter and dried cheeses of Mongol and Tibetan herders, and two surviving cheeses from Yunnan: rubing and rushan. We also find out how tofu and fermented tofu, sometimes called 'Chinese cheese', took over the role dairy played elsewhere, and why cheese is really a way to store milk. This video covers science and history only. It does not give medical, diet or health advice. Chapters: 00:00 The Oldest Cheese on Earth 01:40 The Gene That Switches Off 04:30 Why Herders Evolved It 06:53 Cheese: A Way to Store Milk 08:44 Farmers, Herders and a Line on the Map 10:45 When the Tang Court Loved Dairy 13:13 Frontier Dairies: Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang 15:21 Yunnan's Secret Cheeses 17:12 The Bean That Became Milk 19:11 So, Did China Make Cheese? #FoodHistory #Cheese #ChineseFood Music: "Journey Home" — Chris Haugen, YouTube Audio Library license (monetizable; no attribution required) — https://studio.youtube.com/ → Biblioteca de áudio "Rain Over Kyoto Station" — The Mini Vandals, YouTube Audio Library license (monetizable; no attribution required) — https://studio.youtube.com/ → Biblioteca de áudio "Way Back Home" — Simon Herody, YouTube Audio Library license (monetizable; no attribution required) — https://studio.youtube.com/ → Biblioteca de áudio Image credits (CC BY): "" — Bolonoo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "" — Fiver, der Hellseher, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "" — Pratyeka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "" — Till Niermann, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons "" — Xiaohe mummy in XUAR Museum 01 — Baomi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "" — Xiaohe mummy in XUAR Museum 02 — Baomi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "" — Zde, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "" — rduta, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons "" — Костя Голобородов, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Map of the Lop Nor region by Folke Bergman 1935.jpg" — Folke Bergman, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons "Thiksey Monastery, Butter Lamp, Ladakh, North India - 2007" — Vyacheslav Argenberg, BY 4.0, via Openverse Other images and footage: public domain, openly licensed or licensed stock from Canva, Canva Pro, Coverr, Openverse, Pixabay, Smithsonian, The Met, Wikimedia Commons. AI disclosure: Clara, the presenter, is an AI-generated character; the narration voice and many of the images and clips in this video are AI-generated (Google Gemini, Flow/Veo). The script is researched and fact-checked before narration.