Sunday, March 11

Hello Everyone!

We hope that you have enjoyed our blog thus far and are excited to continue reporting our recent endeavors. We have been blessed with wonderful weather for the trip and are excited for more to come. Today we left the city of Yi Chang, and we were all quite sad to leave, as it was a wonderful experience, however brief our visit. Yi Chang is a quite industrious city, as it is known not only for its electrical powerhouses that generate electricity for a 1000 km radius from the city, but also its agriculture. Yi Chang is well-known for its green tea and fishing enterprises. Carp and sturgeon are most prevalent, as well as catfish. However, we were most amazed by the hospitality and friendliness of the people here, as we were invited to a wedding party and had a wonderful time at a karoke club in the evening. This morning we embarked on a bus ride to the city of Wu Han, which is known as a city of many beutiful lakes and appeared to be comparable to Detroit, as there is a very large automobile manufacturing industry there. In Wu Han, we parted ways from our local tour guide, Holly, at the train station, where we boarded a high-speed train to take us to our final destination today, the city of Guangzhou. Holly was an excellent tour guide and we quite enjoyed her company. She told us that she has had many tour groups from America, but not too many students, so she had fun with us and was glad to be part of our experience here in China.
The high-speed train was certainly an adventure for us! We traveled through the countryside at 187 miles/hour and were taken aback by the beutiful landscape we saw. There were fields of canola, rice and many other crops all along our journey, with every field divided into small plots known as "mu." One mu is equatable to about 1/6th of an acre, and is roughly the amount of land that each farmer cares for. Interestingly, we saw many more cattle in the fields we passed through, than we have seen previously. However, the cattle, or water buffalo are still kept individually, and are most likely shared between multiple families to use as plow or draft animals. The landscape makes it a little hard to travel back to South Dakota, as it is absolutely beautiful here. We have seen gorgeous mountains, valleys, green fields of crops and have been amazed at the industrialization of the cities.
We would like to thank everyone who has helped orchestrate this trip, especially our tour guides Randy, Michelle, Eilleen, Holly and now Joselyn, and our financiers as we are having the experience of a lifetime and and couldn't be in better care. We would also like to thank Jared and Katie Knock for chaperoning, and of course, Dr. Thaler for pulling this together and making it happen. We have had a great time and couldn't be more excited to continue to see more of China's culture and agricultural industry.
We would also like to thank everyone back home for their support and hope to continue reporting more great adventures! Tomorrow we will visit a port in Guang Zho as well as a soybean crushing facility.
Best wishes and until tomorrow,
SDSU Agricultural China Tour