Monday, March 12

Today we spent our first day in the city of goats, or more commonly known as Guangzhou, a city of 18 million people that none of us had heard about until this trip. It's crazy how there are so many large cities in this country that are relatively unknown in the US. It seems like even the small cities have 2-3 million people. Guangzhou is an important manufacturing and shipping center and is located pretty close to Hong Kong. China has several ports now but for the past 300 years Guangzhou has historically been the place to get products in and out of China. The landscape reminds us a lot of Louisiana/New Orleans...although it is probably warmer back in SD today than it is here as it feels like mid 40s to mid 50s. We all packed warm weather clothes and it doesn't look like we will get to use them. Our tour guide, Jocelyn, this morning pointed out that the local language is Cantonese, which is written the same as Mandarin but spoken differently. All the Chinese words we have learned so far like 'hello' and 'thank you' will not apply in Guangzhou. Jocelyn also told us the food is very unique here...for example, they eat everything with legs except the kitchen table and everything in the water except boats. Some of our meals could turn out to be pretty interesting.
Our first stop of the day was the Guangzhou Port Nasha Grain and General Cargo Terminal which is the biggest port in south China. There are 6 berths at this port, with 2 of them for loading grain. At present most of the grain in this terminal is corn and wheat from other areas of China but this will probably change in the future as the facility expands. The grain terminal looked pretty much brand-new which makes sense considering the port is only 3 years old. There were still workers welding on some of the equipment so it is evident that construction is ongoing. The terminal has a current capacity of around 15 million bushels but the plan is almost double that capacity in the near future. An interesting comment by one of our class was "I wonder when the last time the US built a new port?"
We also visited a different part of the same port called the Guangzhou South China Oceangate Container Terminal. Last year, this port handled the equivalent of 8.8 million 20 ft containers. They have more land set aside for future expansion of this port, which is already the fastest growing port in the world. It seems like everywhere you look in this city things are primed for expansion.
Our afternoon visit was to the headquarters of Dongling Grain & Oil Co., Ltd, which was establisted in 1999. Although this company has invested in other entities such as real estate and retail, Dongling's main specialization is soybean processing, vegoil production, and grains trading. All the oil that is processed is edible oil, which makes sense in a country who uses oil in almost everything they eat. This company processes 2.5 million tons of soybeans a year, with plans and construction already in progress to expand to twice that size. All the soybeans that are handled are imported from either Brazil, the United States, or Argentina. It was interesting that the manager said the beans from Brazil and the US are of better quality than the beans from Argentina.
The plant shipped all their products in and out on barges. The raw soybeans arrive in bulk from other shipping terminals or are offloaded from large international ships. The soybean meal leaves the plant in 60 kg bags and the oil is refined into food grade quality and also shipped out in small containers. For whatever reason China has a hard time making a transition to bulk movement of feed and other products.
We also stopped for a short walking tour of a farm/garden area where there was corn, bananas, sugar cane, and a few other crops that we didn't recognize. There was a ditch for irrigation every 20 feet or so which is strange because it seems like irrigation would be unnecessary in a wet climate like this. It is pretty obvious that all the planting and harvesting is done manually which is a pretty foreign concept to most of us.
Right now we are heading back into the city for supper and then to the hotel. We hear the weather is nice back in Brookings and we hope it will continue after we get home on Friday. Good night!