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China is a very brand-intensive society. The reason that brands are so very important is that they are a way to signal social status.

We might be shifting away from a Eurocentric view of the United States into something that's much more multicultural, multinational, and Chinese food is just one slice of that.

Our goal is to upgrade the life of China's middle class. We all want to live better.

Food as a hobby used to be an elite pastime, and it has become something that is totally ordinary for people of every background. In that way, we see the growing up of the American food scene: that it's okay to be a regular person and be really into food.

I am an American, steeped in American values. But I know on an emotional level what it means to be of the Chinese culture.

I actually didn't grow up in a household that loved Chinese food particularly, and it's not really my go-to food or anything... We were more a pizza family, being from the Chicago area and all.

The Chinese consumer is everybody. It's very simple.

I've been a foodie most of my life. I started when I lived for a year in Germany in my early 20s, and here was this new food environment, and I decided I needed to make sense of it. And I found it was the rules of economics that do the best job. Food is a capitalist product of supply and demand.

Our focus going forward is on sectors where the life of China's middle class can be upgraded: health, travel, leisure, education, and the Internet. We call it marrying China's growth with global resources.

When I was a little girl, if I didn't eat my soup, my mother would say, 'You have to think of all the Chinese children who have nothing to eat.' But now, for my children, Chinese people make everything, and for my grandchildren, they buy everything.