The girls and guy of Ventures In Development (password protected) (abandoned site blocked in China) have been in Shangri-La the past few days (or has it been weeks?). They brought down some cheese from up north where it's being produced and I was lucky enough to be around to try some of it. It was quite nice. Not being a cheese aficionado (and not having ever had fresh cheese before, I don't think), I can't make any more specific pretentious-sounding comments about it.

The only online publicity that I've seen about them so far was this article, in what seems to be Harvard's student newspaper (or one of them). Quite cool sounding plans.

While their Kennedy School classmates head off to jobs at the United Nations and on Capitol Hill, Carol Chyau and Marie So will launch an enterprise that will bring “Yashmere” from rural China to Western wardrobes.

A lot of the families in the area aren't the best nourished (often, many days might go by where people only eat pork fat, yak butter tea, and zampa which is a roasted barley powder), and if yak butter is removed from that equation, people might not replace it with better food. I took some of the cheese to let Zhuoma try it -- I wanted to share this experience of trying this great cheese with her. Her nephew was there and he didn't like it at all.

I do hope their company succeeds, though. I'd hate to see 4 more people turn into international ngo/corporate/government bureaucracy cogs. Or whatever you do with a prestigious "development degree." And I think both projects can, but perhaps not in the ways that they seem like they might be picturing at the moment.