Well on Friday morning, the 5th of August, I traveled home. My flight left at 9 am. I arrived at the airport at 7 am. When I was about half way through the line, they moved some others and me to another line. I was only about three people from the counter. When I got to the counter, they sent me back to the other line. I was getting frustrated by this point, when I got to the counter they told me the plane was over booked and I could not get on. They first wanted to put me on a flight at 5:30. After another 2 hours of waiting, they were able to get me on a flight with another company at noon. This was how I started my 24 hours of travel to make it home. In the end, I managed to get home two hours earlier than planned and can now say I visited California. J It feels very good to back in the states and be able to see my family and friends. Although this was the end of my travels, it is not the end of my journey. This trip will have lifelong affects on my life. I really enjoyed my time there and am very glad I had the opportunity. It has changed my outlook on foreign affairs and different cultures. I thank God for blessing me with this opportunity and Dr. Thaler for helping plan the trip. I am also very grateful for all of the companies and individuals I traveled with in China.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Day 38
Today I was going to a not restored part of the wall but the quickest way using public transit was going to take 5 hours. It only takes an hour by car but we did not have access to a car. So instead, we went to the Beijing Zoo. The zoo itself covered 219 acres. However, I was very disappointed in it as the conditions of the facilities and living arrangements of the animals were very run down and not very accommodating. They had a fairly wide range of animals but often they were labeled wrong for example, they had a cage labeled striped skunk and it had two raccoons in it. Supper was pretty exciting as it was my last meal at CAU. I am very excited to return to my American diet!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Day 37
Today was a slow day. I spent the day packing and talking with kids at the university. It is always interesting to talk with the student and professors here. The “army” dish is my standard diet at MAfic. Although this meat actually had some variety, it had fruit and more than a few slices of meat! Supper was much more delicious as Dr. Cao took me out with his wife and one of his graduate students. We went to a local restaurant that was fairly high class. I had some of the spiciest dishes yet. We had one that was a fish dish it was so good but boy did I sweat while eating it. She was not sure of the name in English but she said it was a carnivore river fish. I enjoyed supper with them as I was getting slightly sick of the food at mafic, there is not much variety, and she had good English so I learned more about Chinese culture. One of the more interesting things she told me was that Chinese woman try to get as fair colored skin as they can. That is why so many woman walk around with umbrellas all the time. They do this so that they won’t tan. They also have makeup and treatments that will lighten their skin color. It is completely different then the western culture! I am now on an hour countdown until my adventure comes to a close. I am excited to be home and prepare for another adventure, Vet School.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Day 36
Today I went to The Great Wall. The part we visited was called Badaling. It was about a 2 hour bus ride there. It is the more touristy part of the wall as a lot of it has been updated for the hikers’ safety and appearance. It was a nice day to hike, as it was cool but the fog/haze that was blocking out the sun also made the distance pictures very hard to take. It was still simply amazing that they could build such a huge and rugged defense system in 5th century. The wall borders the northern side of China and the south of Mongolia. The entire wall stretches roughly 6300 km (3900 mi). They say that building the wall was such hard and physically demanding work that one person died for every meter of the wall that was built. The terrain that it was built over is insane. At one point, I was standing 5 steps farther along the wall then my friend and my head was level with his feet. It was about a 6 foot drop over 4 feet. It was definitely a tough climb at times. However, some of it was pretty flat of had a small grade. Not all of it was steps but it sure felt like it. I really got a hard work out. One of my thoughts while hiking the wall was I am glad we did not have this near my hometown we surely would have had track or cross country practice on it. I did race a kid to the top of one of the climbs. I had a definite advantage with my longer legs. An interesting fact about the steps of the wall is that they are all different heights and sizes. This was done so that the enemy soldiers would trip trying to climb it but the Chinese soldiers would know the steps from the repetitious climbs they had. This would definitely have worked as I clipped my toe several times. We took a break at one of the towers to eat some bread that we had packed and just as we were leaving one of the names scratched into the wall caught my eye. It had two Chinese characters at the beginning and some English letters after it. When one of the Chinese characters was covered up, it looked exactly like my name. The students I was with could not understand why is said it was my name because they just saw them as Chinese characters. So I covered it up and they just thought that was the coolest thing. It was definitely cool to see but I am worn out from all the hills and the heat.
Day 35
Today I met Geoff’s old research assistant, Lee, as he wanted to say bye before he left for the States. Lee is going to graduate school at Penn State. We went to the silk market again to buy him some shirts before I left and to return a cord that I had bought that did not work. When I tried to return it I had to argue and barging to get my full price back. It was quite frustrating especially since I had just bought it the day before and they remembered selling it to me. I eventually prevailed and was refunded the full amount. Then it was off to buy some shirts for Lee. My previous statements about Chinese being so helpful and generally nice to you have changed some in the last few weeks. I know realize they are nice to me but as several Chinese have told me is that they generally dislike each other. The cast system is definitely in full swing here and they often see themselves better than those cooking the food, or cleaning the rooms. This is often evident when I ask a student to ask the cook how his day or weekend was they are very hard to persuade into doing so. However, I think part of this dislike is because of how they generally treat each other. I especially saw this when dealing with the sales people when buying the shirts. They were much more willing to deal with Geoff or me, as we were always smiling and not critical. In addition, we always came away with a better price. A funny thing happened when I was dealing on an item I was trying to buy I gave my price and she was determined not to sell it to me for that so I walked away. She called me back 5 times and finally sold it to me. I was walking around with the item and another dealer asked me what I paid for it. He said he would buy it for me for 10 RMB more. I know the people I bought it from still made money but they obviously were close to even with it and often sold them for much more. (I guess I am a good Dutchman). I have often found that you can get it for nearly 10% of the first price they give you. They will start with an outrageous price but immediately knock off 10 or 20 percent to start as “the special price for you!” Then the bargaining is on! I enjoy it but it would get old after a while. I was drug into several clothing shops to look and ended up bargaining and a few I would have to physically force my way out because they were so determined to sell me something I had never wanted. I don’t ever buy from these shops. There are so many shops that you always find some happy polite person to deal with.
They also sell many handcrafts here, which are pretty amazing to watch. The glass jars are painted from the inside and the river and waterfall paintings are made by only using parts of his hands. He often used the fingernail, the side of his palm or his knuckle. These were quite spendy and they would not budge much below a certain level. Usually you would leave and come back they would drop it slightly but we tried this a few times with the pictures and they stayed solid.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Day 34
Day 33
Today was a slow relaxing day. I caught up on some emails and played some basketball and some catch with some kids at the college. Basketball is huge here because of Yao Ming so you see news stories about him constantly since he decided to retire. Baseball on the other hand is basically nonexistent so playing catch is not very common. Miranda, the English teacher from St Paul, bought the gloves and ball and she is teaching the kids how to play. It still amazes me how many opportunities we have in the country side in the states. For supper Miranda cook some chicken for me. She said she had a bunch of it because she helped butcher some of the experimental ones and she got to take a bunch home. Don’t worry it was only a feed gain study. :P Although it was weird knowing it was from a trial. This did give me a few more firsts; I tried a chicken foot, tongue and head. The tongue was not worth eating, the foot was alright, it was like eating cartilage or a very chewy tough piece of meat. The head was an adventure; it took a lot of work for the meat, although the brain was decent, once again small though. The chickens are not nearly as big as the ones in the states though. The university actually spent 15 years trying to breed a smaller chicken so that it would fit in a pot easier.
Day 32
The day started out with a huge rainstorm. The streets were once again flooded here. They said it happened a lot when I was gone too and that this is quite unusual. I walked through about 6 inches of water to eat breakfast. (I am glad I have shorts, sandal, and an umbrella). This afternoon I went to the Forbidden City. It is so amazing how they were able to build such vast and complex buildings and walls. Three 30 foot thick and 25 feet high, walls surround the city! The entire ground had a stone floor that was 13 layers thick. Each layer was laid at a different angle to the last one so that no one could dig under the wall and into the city. The walls surround a complex that consists of 980 buildings with 8,700 rooms. It covers 7,800,000 sq ft. It was constructed during the Ming and Qing dynasty, which was around 1400-1420. It took 15 years to build with over 1 million workers. It is crazy how much history there is in China and how everything was specifically used to symbolize something. After the Forbidden City, Geoff had a meeting that I sat in on. Then we walked around various streets in Beijing. There is a wide variety of buildings in the city. It was cool to see modern buildings on one side and old original ones on the other side. He took me to Wangfujing walking street, which is full of food vendors, and small knick-knack shops. Most of them are food at night though. They roll out a cart with a propane grill on it and they cook about anything you could possibly think about eating. They had scorpions on sticks where the legs were still moving, starfish, eel, sparrow, pigeon, and spiders just to name a few. I tried the ostrich. It was pretty good but a little on the tough side. I also had strawberries and miniature apples on a stick. They were covered with a caramel like substance. They were very sweet! It was another fun day in China.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Day 31
Today was my final day of city hopping in China. It is amazing the places I have been in the last 5 weeks. Before I head back to Beijing I had the wrap up meeting for the dairy conference I was attending. Dr. Cao gave his speech along with several other individuals. I spent this time relaxing, as I had NO idea what was being said. I think this would have been a very informational meeting if I understood Chinese! There were about 125 people attending the presentations. This started at about 8:30 and lasted till 4 pm. For dinner I had another first. I had Scallops. They were actually quite good. It is weird to think about but I doubt I would have even tried them in the states if I had looked at them a few weeks ago. This afternoon I flew back to Beijing. It was my first flight in China where I was not delayed! I am excited to return to Beijing as I have some site seeing left to do there including the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City. I am excited to see all of these and spend some more time with Lee and Geoff.
Day 30
Today was another adventure. We took a 3-hour bus ride northeast of Lanzhou to visit some more dairies. The scenery on the way to them reminded me a lot of the South Dakota Bad Lands there was nothing but barren brown mountains. This went on for about 2 hours. Then almost in a straight line, there were crops, mostly corn. They had leveled off some of the mountains, and valleys and made fields. These where watered using drainage ditches. We also drove through several small villages. It was a ton of fun to look out the window and watch all of the people’s faces as they got excited and pointed at me when they noticed. I saw a few people struggle to keep their balance as they stared over their shoulder. The first dairy we visited it was very modernized. I honestly felt like I was back in the States. They had a double 18 parlor, milking around 1000 head. They milked 3 times a day, 6 am, 2 pm, and 8 pm. I am not sure what kind of numbers they were getting although I am sure they are not close to what we get at home. I say this because the feed quality is not available here. Their silage does not have the same quality and the hay does not have the leaves we do and has a high NDF. They were using a large feeder wagon and had a silage pile defacer. The dairy was being expanded with several buildings outfitted with free stalls equipped with waterbeds. The second dairy was about an hour drive from the first. Its appearance was not as impressive but they were also very modernized. They were only milking 800 currently but they were not at full production yet. They had a 34head rotary parlor. At each dairy we had about 15 people visit with us and after the walk through, we would have a comment session. I have no idea what they talked about, as I did not receive much translation on this trip. Although it was cool to see the dairy’s nonetheless.
Day 29
This morning started out early, with a shower handle in my hand and no water. I was able to put it back on and get a decent shower yet. I guess it proves that my hotel is bottom of the barrel. However, the day turned around, as I was able to visit two dairies with Dr. Cao, and one of the most rnouned dairy vets in China(not sure how to say or spell his name, names are really hard here).He has written a book on the dairy industry that they call the “the dairy bible.” Most of the dairy’s here are semi modernized but not nearly to the stage of those in the U.S. One of the dairies was state owned. It had a feeder wagon, which was an Israeli product. and a double 14 parlor. About 30% of the dairies are government owned in China. It was pretty cool to be able to see a dairy although I think there quality is nothing near that of the states. I was able to see this in the feedstuffs they had. Their corn silage did not have any corn in it. It was merely the forage. The alfalfa hay was nothing like that of the states. It was very hard to break and was probably a very high non-digestible fiber. I also noticed that at the state owned dairy they were feeding carrots.
This afternoon was very relaxing. Dinner lasted about 3 hours. The place we ate at roasted an entire lamb. It was not too bad. The spice reminded me a lot of the Muslim spice from the other night. All of the vegetables were actually wild. Some of them were not too bad. Although most of them were green. After dinner I was taught a Chinese card game it was interesting to watch and I played a few hands with someone’s help but the people I was playing with did not know much English so they struggled to explain it so I learned more by watching it. The temperature is not nearly as hot as Beijing as we are in the mountains. Lanzhou is completely surrounded by mountains. The air quality is much better so I was able to see the sun and blue sky today for the first time in a while. I really miss my countryside back home because of the spectacular views I always have. I have definitely realized how many things I take for granted in rural America.
Day 28
Once again today it was raining. It rained all morning so we stayed inside for the morning. This gave me more opportunity to talk to Geoff and Lee. It is fun to spend time with them. Geoff has so many interesting stories. Lee explains a lot of Chinese history also about the common life in China. It was cooler this afternoon and I was actually able to see the sky. It was blue for the first time since I have been in Beijing. The air quality is still very bad. Many people who have lived there for their whole life have a lot of respiratory problems. Tonight I am flying to Lanzhou. It is in the “west” part of China. They call it the west when in reality, it is in the middle geographically but since the far west is all dessert, they don’t consider it worth much. In addition, there was an accident on the high-speed train. One of them was struck by lightning and lost power; another one hit it from the back. There are not very many reports about it as the government actually buried the train and evidence. Lee said once it is buried it is illegal to dig it up. It continues to blow my mind how the government takes care of things here yet. I have also been told stories of them just moving entire towns and cities because they want to build a power plant in the location. In addition, to deal with high iron level in the top soil that they can’t grow crops. They wanted to move all of the people out of the area and level off an entire mountain “renew” the top soil.
My flight was once again delayed so I flew out at 11 pm. I had a window seat for the first time so I was able to look out the window. It was interesting how there were not lights consistently like in the states but a lot of pitch dark instead. After I landed at 1 am, I had an hour taxi ride to the hotel. I have never seen anyone get so upset about something. As soon as I walked out of the airport, I was mobbed by drivers. I honestly thought they were going to get in a fistfight over it! However, I was just happy to make it to my hotel on time. I am going to admit it is the lowest quality one yet.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Day 27
Today is Sunday and I am finally in Beijing again for one so I was able to go to church today. I find it amazing how many Chinese come to worship God. The church has 6 services now, there is still hardly any standing room left by the time the service starts, and the building is bigger than our local churches. At the end of each service, they have all the first time people stand up and both times I have been there are about 60 new people. I asked Geoff if they usually come back. He said almost always. Then he continued on to day that when school starts again the services are going to be too full because most of the students are gone now but there are a lot of them that come during the school year. After church, we went to another market place. It was in your technology sector of Beijing. It is the “silicon valley” of China. There were all kinds of vendors selling every type of electronic possible. The prices were very similar to those in the states. When we left there, it was raining extremely hard. We took an underground walkway to the subway station then got off at a bus station that was covered. So we managed to stay dry until we got off at the front gate of the campus. From there we had about a half-mile walk. Even though the rain had lightened up a lot, all of the streets were flooded so you ended up getting wet anyway. The water was so deep in places that it was up to the middle of car bumpers. The rain was off and on all night. I spent the rest of the day with Lee who is a senior in animal science here. He is also Geoff’s research assistant. He is studying for the “TOFU” test (I am not sure on the spelling) but it is an English test that they are required to pass to graduate. They are required to answer verbal questions and be able to talk for 60 seconds about it. Lee asked Geoff some of the questions. Geoff easily answered but failed it because he answered too quickly. Because Lee is practicing for it, he and Geoff have an English only policy. This is nice because I am able to understand what is being said and Lee has very good English already so I really enjoyed spending time with him.
Day 26
I had a relaxing day today. The morning was a short seminar that one of the students gives every Saturday. They perform it in English but the discussion is in Chinese. I can understand some of the English. They use some wrong pronunciations of the words, which make it hard, but I can follow most of them. Today’s girl had decent English. This afternoon I went swimming at a local hotel that has an open swim. I went with about five other people and the English teacher. It was weird how many people where there but most did not know how to swim. This is something I take for granted. My food is not too exciting here at CAU as it is almost always the same and seems to be just a mixture of the last meal with one new thing. However, they don’t have supper on Saturday or any meals on Sunday in the cafeteria near where I live. So we usually eat at the one of the other two that are on campus, they are a little bit of a trek to get to, or eat off campus. Tonight we had barbecue. It was a Muslim restaurant. They place everything on a cabob stick and grill it over a propane flame. There are a lot of street vendors that do it this way. The place itself was very small. All of the seating was outside as was most of the cooking. We had lamb and chicken wings, along with some potatoes and mushrooms. The food was very good but seemed to all have the same flavor as the dish before it. Although it was very good to have some more meat and potatoes in my diet! It still amazes me how many different site I see here in China. The general public has a different way of living here. As always though I am enjoying learning about it.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Day 25
Today marked the 2 weeks left date. I am really missing home and solid English conversations. I enjoy my time over here and it is a once in a lifetime experience but 6 weeks in a foreign land is harder than one might think. However, I have always been prone to go big once I get an idea in my head and I am glad I received this opportunity. Today was a travel day. I once again traveled to the airport had the standard delay and flew back to Beijing. I am really starting to have the procedure down pat. Although, today I was a “VIP”. Jason had me come along with him through his security point and into the lounge. I am not exactly sure how we managed that. He was trying to help me book my tickets for next week’s travels. It is somewhat funny how I went from never flying commercially at the beginning of the year to having about 20 flights under my belt by the time the trip is over. Most of which were in a foreign country and by myself. Another travel challenge is always the taxi ride. I have the address to the university in my phone and show them but that is about all I can do. I am starting to recognize the roads that I have to take but I still can’t communicate that to them. Today the driver was not sure where we had to go when we got closer. I knew we had to keep going straight but had no way of getting that communicated to him. I tried several different ways. In the end, I call Belinda from school and she talks to them but I always spend about 5 minutes explaining to her what I need done. Language is such a barrier. I often think about how frustrating it must have been at the Tower of Babel when God first changed all of the languages.
Day 24
Today was an interesting day, seems like I have had a lot of them in the last few weeks. J We traveled to see some potential building sites. It was really cool because I was able to see some different parts of the countryside. The area we went into, Guangxi Province, produced a 5th of China’s sugar. They had fields of sugar cane like we have fields of corn and soybeans. They also are the largest producer of sesame flowers. They use this to make tea. Tea is by far the most common drink here. I have had several different flavors of it. Some of them I like others I cannot stand drinking. Overall, I do not think this trip will convert me into a tea drinker. They also had fields and fields of banana trees. All of the bananas had been picked already but I have had several fresh ones throughout the duration of my trip. We also went to their feed mill. They used a special kind of paint on the roof to keep the building cooler. They said they had a 15 degree Celsius temperature difference. My meals were definitely very different again. If the food I have eaten so far has not made you squirm some I think today’s meals might. For dinner, the meal was alright. There were a few different types of meat and seafood. I tend to lean more to the seafood here as it is unique to the area. There are several times that I will try something without knowing what it actually is. I usually wait to ask until after I have tried them. I have found out that it is a better practice. The new thing that I tried at dinner was pig bladder. I had to ask a few times what is was, as it really did not look like a bladder to me. It honestly was not too bad. It had a slight spongy texture to it. At supper, I had a new fruit. It was called a fire dragon. It quite sweet. I really liked it. I hope to find more if I can. I also had a leeche. This is also a fruit. You have to peel a shell off it. The inside is clear and very sweet. There is a seed inside of it much like a cherry. For supper I had some great food. Although, I also had some bee larva, it was honestly pretty good. They were soft but had a slight crunch. Snails were also served. You used a tooth pick to pick it out of shell. After that you only eat the front part of it. They were not bad, once again they had a soft texture as expected but were easy to eat.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Day 23
Today Jason and I drove to a few farms about 2.5 hours to the south of Nanning to Hepu. This city is located about 10 miles from the South China Sea and about 75 miles from the Vietnam border. The first farm we went to was quite an adventure. We traveled down the first gravel road I have been on this trip and it was rough to say the least. Then we crossed a river on foot and switched to a different car. From there we continued for about 5 miles. When we arrived, we walked through disinfectant misters and washed the car off. They are trying to eradicate PRRS from the farm. The employees live on the site year round in the provided dorms and receive meals. It is all families here. They are allowed to plant what they want in the surrounding ground. I saw several different plants drying off on all of the rooftops and cement pads. They grow several crops I have not seen before. They have peanuts, banana trees, pomegranate, and several others. The facilities are quite old but they are kept very clean. They were nearly done with the depopulation and disinfecting. Since doing so they have had a huge improvement in production numbers. They actually export live hogs to Hong Kong. For supper we ate at a local restaurant. It was seafood. This provided some new food experiences once again. The food here was mostly salty so it was right up my alley on taste and was all pretty good. Some of the firsts consisted of squid, which was not too bad it had a mushy texture but was eatable. I also had many different types of whole fish. We had fish soup, which had small fish in it. These were dark in color and very soft. I also had fried fish. They were about the size of a sunny and had a very salty flavor; this was one of my favorites. I also had whole shrimp. You eat the entire thing legs, antennas and all. This was not the battered shrimp we have in the states. There was also another fish soup with chunks of a larger fish in it. This was also good. The only problem with the food was trying to avoid all of the small fish bones. I really enjoyed today, as I was able to see an older facility that was still working well and was being updated as much as possible from pen gestation to gestation crates, forced cold air and drippers for the sows.
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