Day 34

Sunday, so off to church I went. At church I met several other Americans. There was a group from Pennsylvania teaching English for three weeks at a university down the road from CAU. Several of them have been here before but it was the first time they had been the church. The pastor was very interesting and he was very passionate about delivering the word of God. It is always so impressive how emotional and excited they get about God. He had an interesting slide and break down of John 3:16. I hope the picture is clear enough to read.  I found out that the church has seating for 1000 people and they allow 200 more in to stand. That is not including the “over flow” area. They have 6 services and everyone of them is full. It amazes me how much the spirit is at work here. They had 165 baptism today. They have had over 320 this month! God is so powerful! I really think that the Chinese people really hunger for the word of God as often the common people here have a harder life than we are accustom to the in the states. However, the standard of life here is increasing drastically. Geoff was talking about how some old underground churches he knew about when the government was suppressing them have expanded with the new policy and actually the government has built their buildings for them. The churches here are required to belong to an association but it is not a regulation one like many people believe. It is similar to how the churches in the states are in some association. I am down to 4 day left here in China. I have some tourism plans but this week will be slower, which will be nice after a very fast moving, busy 5 weeks. I am starting to prepare some of my things for the trip home! I am very excited about seeing my family and friends and being back in my normal setting, especially my small town countryside!

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.

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.

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.

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 5^th 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.

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.

Day 22

I spent most of today in a car. I am glad as it rained all morning and into the afternoon. We drove out of Hangzhou to Anji to look some swine sites that a company is looking at buying and a new construction site they have started. Anji is one of the top furniture making, bamboo and wood harvesting cities in China. It was interesting to see how much bamboo was being harvested and how it was hauled and handled. I also  saw tea trees for the first time. They are quite short. I need to  try find out how they are “harvested.” The company is actually in internet gaming company here in China and they announce 3 years ago that they were going to be investing in the swine industry. (Not exactly your typical investor). They are looking at purchasing the two old sites for disease control and maybe to utilize one of them as a quarantine facility. These sites where quite interesting to get to. We followed a moped down a cement road that was no wider than a typical sidewalk. After that, we walked down a flooded out path through the rice fields to the barn. It was very old and run down, the typical brick 40’s style building. They had a few pigs ranging from 30-100 lbs. They also had a sow rooting around outside. After this site, we walked to an elderly couple’s sow and farrowing barn. He only had one boar there, but had previously been raising around 15 sows; this is big for a country farm where the norm is one or two sows. He was looking to move away as none of the younger generation was around anymore. It was interesting that his barns you build about three feet away from his house. After this trip, we went to the company’s new site where they were beginning the dirt work. All of the dirt I have seen in China has this red tint to it similar to the dirt in Oklahoma. The facilities where going to be for 300 sows and barns to finish out the pigs. They plan to raise a local breed to try capturing a niche market and maintaining the local flavor. The company made huge news when they announced their intent in swine and a camera crew was at the site. They interviewed a few of the individuals that I was traveling with. It is interesting to see how Ag is approached here versus in the states and how much the government is doing to support it and jump-start it. They know that China will need a better source of protein as they develop and this will come from pork. Therefore, they are making huge changes to make sure they do not have to import their food source in the future.  

Once again, I changed cities today. I am now in Nanning, which is southwest of Shanghai. I am excited to see what God has in store for me here. I am seeing so much of China’s countryside and different cities everyone is slightly different but seems to be looking more and more alike. :P

Day 21

Today was a slow day as I spent the entire day in meetings at Zhejiang University. It is one of the top 10 Universities in China. I really do not think there universities here are nearly as good as ours are in the states. I have seen several now and especially the animal science and agriculture facilities do not compare to those at SDSU or the equivalent state side University. They are however talking about building a 300 sow facilities with the necessary buildings to finish the pigs out. They are going to use it for research and an example of an environmentally friendly facility. I spent the day listening to many Chinese and trying to pick up tid bits when possible. Jason said that this project is giving him gray hairs because he is teaching several civil engineering students about what needs to be in the barns and how they will function. The food here is once again different from what I ate previously on my trip. It is not the spicy food of Beijing or Xi’an, or the sweet of Shanghai. I was once again reminded of how much the presentation of the dish matters here in China as everything came with some sort of green or red on the dish. However, I was not very impressed with much of it but I did eat some more firsts. I had squid, which was served in a stir-fry with bacon. I had several different roots. I had Bamboo root, and Lotus root. I hated the Bamboo root but the Lotus root was somewhat sweet. It was purple in color and the texture was not half bad. I also had pigeon soup. Most of the soups here are a broth that you drink with some sort of meat or veggies in them. The broth tastes like every other broth. I did enjoy the duck we had for supper though. It had a barbecue flavor to it. An  interesting thing that I did learn is that here in the north west people are more business and individually minded compared to the friendly and helpful demeanor of the South west (Xi’an).

Day 20

I took another plane ride today. I flew from Beijing to Hangzhou; once again, it was interrupted with some delays. Hangzhou is located inland ways with latitude about half way between Beijing and Shanghai and has a population of nearly 6.7 million. The view out of the airplane window when we were landing was pretty cool as it was almost all fields of rice. I am hoping that we travel outside of the city during our two day stay here. When I arrived, I rode with Jason from the US grains council. He had a friend pick us up and bring us to our hotel. He actually plays basketball in the Chinese version of the NBA. It was somewhat cool meeting him. Something not many people can say they have done. This afternoon I had some free time to spend in Hangzhou. Hangzhou was described by Marco Polo as one of the finest and most splendid cities in the world. The hotel we are staying is located across the street from The West Lake. It is one of 32 named lakes in China. Way different from our ten thousand in Minnesota. It was pretty nice to walk around the lake. It reminded me of home. Although, the Chinese people wanting to take pictures with me reminded me that I was still in China. J Tonight I ate supper in the hotel as Jason had some business he wanted to take care of so he left me to find my own supper. It was a good chance to have some western food. I had a grilled steak and fries. It was very good I know I miss my mainly meat and potato diet from the states. Tonight I am relaxing in my room and managed to find a few English television channels. Some places will have a few but this hotel actually has some of the top English ones, aka HBO, ESPN, and a few other movie ones. It is nice to have ESPN to relax to, it helps get rid of some of the homesickness. Six weeks is a long time to not have a connection with my family and friends.