"Compared to other chocolate brands, we came to China later, but right at the time when Chinese people began to crave premium chocolate," Meier said.

Decades ago, the main sort of chocolate the Chinese would eat were wedding candies that were made with cocoa butter substitutes, shaped into little coins and tended to taste like hard candy.

It was only in the late 1980s that multinational chocolate brands began entering the Chinese market.

The US brand Mars is now the most successful among them, controlling 40 percent of the country's chocolate market with its Dove brand. Following it were the Swiss brand Nestle, with 11 percent of the market, and the Italian brand Ferrero, with 9 percent, according to Euromonitor data from last year. Behind them were Cadbury and Hershey's.

Their China-based competitors such as Golden Monkey and Le Conte are meanwhile still struggling to appeal to Chinese consumers.

More and more foreign brands are flocking into the country. And Chinese customers are now not only concerned with the taste of chocolate but also its ingredients, origin and even history.

"My view is that China has a huge potential market, and we feel that we should allow Chinese consumers to feel the chocolate experience," said Mohamed Elsarky, international general manager at Godiva.

The Belgian chocolate brand opened a shop in Shanghai's Xintiandi entertainment complex in 2010 and began offering fancy, high-priced chocolate, pastries, ice cream and hotpot dishes in a garden villa setting. Since the brand came to China three years ago, 21 Godiva retail shops have opened in the country.

West Africa, the source of nearly three quarters of the world's cocoa, is likely to produce 2.8 million metric tons of cocoa in the 2012-13 season, up from the roughly 2.7 million tons produced the previous season, according to Reuters.

Questions:

1. How much chocolate do people in China consume?

2. What about people in the UK and Japan?

3. Where does three quarters of the world’s cocoa come from?

Answers:

1. 200 grams a year.

2. 12 kilograms and 2 kilograms.

3. West Africa.

（中國(guó)日?qǐng)?bào)網(wǎng)英語(yǔ)點(diǎn)津 Helen 編輯）

About the broadcaster:

Nelly Min is an editor at China Daily with more than 10 years of experience as a newspaper editor and photographer. She has worked at major newspapers in the U.S., including the Los Angeles Times and the Detroit Free Press. She is also fluent in Korean.