A Chinese-born businessman who's lived in Barcelona for 40 years and is president of Spain's Chinese Associations has lately started a new endeavor. A year ago, he and two Chinese partners bought an olive farm. They're already exporting extra virgin olive oil to China. This makes them part of a long history of Spain and Italy exporting the product to China, as the emerging middle class developed a taste for it. Al Goodman reports from the village of Bovera, a two-hour drive from Barcelona.

Lam Chuen Ping -- from Guangdong, China -- owns a top Chinese restaurant in Barcelona, where he's lived for years, also working in the import-export business. But he's never done anything like this. Last year, he bought a historic farm with eighty-six thousand olive trees. And it's already exporting extra virgin olive oil to China.

Lam is now a Spanish citizen but his venture has two Chinese partners, including this woman, Chen Fei Fei. Together, they're still taking stock of what they now own. That includes a century-old farm palace in a prime location of the estate, where some of the oldest olive trees still produce fruit.

LAM CHUEN PING OLIVE OIL PRODUCER "I asked myself what I hadn't done in life. I had never planted a tree. And that's just when friends asked me, why don't you invest in an olive tree farm."

He drives us around the extensive, hilly property.

It's about two hours by car from Barcelona. His move into olive oil comes at an opportune time in his native China, where the rising middle class is snapping it up.

AL GOODMAN BOVERA, SPAIN "China's appetite for extra virgin olive oil is increasing as more people take a liking to this signature part of the Mediterranean diet, built around healthy foods."

Lam's brand for export has Chinese labeling for extra virgin olive oil, and at the bottom, it says the oil comes from just a single pressing, the premium category.

LAM CHUEN PING OLIVE OIL PRODUCER "The younger generation, above all, those who have traveled outside of China, to the West, have realized how healthy olive oil is. If they can afford it, they buy it."

Lam's learning about the business with the help of his Spanish foreman. A long list of tasks, as the harvest approaches. There's plenty of know-how here, since Spain is the world's largest olive oil producer. For years, it's been exported globally, including to China. Several industry veterans say few, if any, other Chinese are involved in producing olive oil in Spain.

Speaking about his new passion, he breaks into English.

LAM CHUEN PING OLIVE OIL PRODUCER "We are watching how the trees change color, get strong, and at that moment, we see the olives. Now they're so small, but every day they grow a little bigger."

Al: "A little bigger."

Lam: "A little bigger."

And there are big plans for the future. To convert the old farm palace into an olive oil conference center, with about 20 hotel-style rooms.

To plant more olive trees on the sprawling property. And to increase olive oil exports to China. Al Goodman, CGTN, Bovera, Spain.