Since we’re still getting to know each other, I’ll start with a topic that’s dear to my heart – you know, so you can get a sense of who I am.

Cheesecake.

I have dedicated much of the past three years to the hunt for cheesecake all across the European continent, so when I stumbled across it on my first day in China without so much as encountering its ersatz counterpart, flan, seemed to good to be true.

And of course, it was.

We were lunching on West Street in the southern city of

Guilin, which is known for its funny knobbly mountains. We’d just stumbled across the first menu I’d seen in years that offered cheesecake, and, not wanting to destroy the magic of anticipation, I started with a banana yoghurt milkshake.

Looking back, this was probably quite the error of judgment in a country that doesn’t do dairy. Whether it was the milk or the yoghurt or even the bananas that were off escaped me – if pressed I’d guess it to be a fatal combination of all three – but this was officially the first menu item that I’ve ever returned in a restaurant, and I stuck to my guns though the cow stationed just outside the back door gazed in at me mournfully for the rest of the meal.

Not that it lasted long – round two, a Caesar salad (even I couldn’t possibly mess this one up, I huffed, though I must admit Wilken raised an eyebrow at this). It consisted of a bowl of soggy lettuce swimming in a liberal application of what could have been mayonnaise but was suspiciously brownish. Closer examination turned up three croutons, all mushed, pulpy and altogether inedible.

Wilken, meanwhile, had bravely ordered a meat dish, and let me just say this: Never, ever serve a German a limp schnitzel. Things will not end pretty.

We never did get around to the cheesecake.