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.