Day Two

Day two of my adventure was a great one! I spent the day with Zhichun Yan (Jason) from the US Grain Counsel. During the day, we visited two sites that BBSC, Beijing Breeding Swine Center, plan to build a new sow unit and wean to finish facilities. These sites were about a two-hour drive to the north west of Beijing. I was very surprised how smooth the roads are here. I also learned how much different our city driving is compared to here. I have never felt that I was in a bumper-to-bumper NASCAR race as I did here. I have decided that if you enjoy weaving in and out of traffic this is the place to come as we passed several police cars as if they were not moving. I do not think they ever make traffic stops. (sounds like a fitting place for me) Today we ate dinner in a village whose American translation meant peace eternal but it was historically a military base. At dinner, I once again was able to experience the Chinese cuisine first hand. We ate in a Tofu restaurant. I never knew there were so many different kinds of tofu. We had 12 different dishes; most of them had some tofu in them. I like the frozen tofu the best; however, the fish head soup was probably the best! (Never thought the phrase would come out of my mouth) I also had another first that I never thought I would have. I officially have eaten donkey. We also had Chinese burgers, which consisted of tofu and vegetables on a bun. It was pretty good actually. One of the individuals that traveled with us was an architect. He had good English and at dinner, he expanded a lot about the culture. He said that there are four main points that the Chinese look for in food. First, is the color, second the smell, third the taste, and fourth is the environment that you are eating it in. Most of the food has a lot of green with some yellow or red in it. I really wish the internet here was fast enough to post the pictures of the food. It is all set one a “turn table” that is in the center of the table and you spin it to the dish you want to take food out of. It is very handy. There is no distraction of passing the food you can just chow down. :P  The architect also explained that the Forbidden City was built on an axis. It included all of the important buildings. The second ring of the city goes out from there 2 km, and the 3^rd ring is 3km and so on until the 6^th ring. He explained that in ancient days Beijing was built in a good spot as it has mountains and the Great wall to the north for easy defense, water to the east and a flat plain and dessert to the south. He said that there were two manmade channels to the south to bring in supplies and food from southern china.

 

Ethan Spronk