Friday, May 13

Today, our group sent some quality time together on a really long bus ride and began to bond. The morning started off with a bus ride to a fish farm in the southern part of the Guangdong province.

This fish farm was only 8 years old, but it is definitely something you would see out of a National Geographic magazine. Every building is made out of bamboo or spare pieces of tin. Each barn holds around 600 pigs and there are 8000 pigs on the farm. The farm has 30 employees that lived on site.  There are 25 ponds being about 1.8 meters deep. The fish are naturally bred and the main breed the farm harvested is China Argus. Some ponds are full of minnow-type fish to feed the bigger fish in other ponds. They regularly check the fish and the water for sickness and disease. If the fish or the water comes back positive for a disease, they will put the antibiotics in the water to treat them. 

The main source of feed for this fish is manure from the pigs. The pig barns are set up in a way so that the solid concrete floor is at an angle with openings on each side that led out to the ponds. When the workers spray out the pens twice a day the manure will go straight into the ponds as nutrients for the fish. The fish are also supplemented with specialty fish feed given to the farm by the Government. Every 12 to 15 month the fish will be harvested at around 3 to 5 kg and the ponds will be drained, sediments at the bottom would be scooped to the side, and the farm will refill the pond and start over. 

We were lucky today, because the fish farm had a pig farm on site. A few days ago the pig farm that was scheduled for our tour backed out. The farmer let a few of us go into the barns to see his pigs, and let me tell you they do not seem that different than the ones being produced for our food back in America. The structures of these buildings again, look like they could fall with a good South Dakota gust came by, but the insides are a completely different story, with all the pens and the feeders being completely made of solid concrete.  

This farm is wean to finish, they get there pigs from a sow farm 200 km away. The pigs come in at 25 kg and go to market 7 months later at 120 kg. The barn is "naturally ventilated" with only blankets covering the big openings in every stall within the barn; but with just the basic necessities given to the pigs, they are still thriving. The genetics of these pigs look similar to ours. The government still allows the use of antibiotics to treat the pigs when sick, but the farmers expects that will not last for much longer. The death loss on the farm was 15% which is very high compared to only 4% in the United States. 

Once we were done at the farm, we went for lunch. That was an eye-opening experience. This local restaurant we went to was on a gravel road out in the middle of farm land, with only one or two sturdy structures, the others were make-shift. This restaurant is the very meaning of farm-to-table. The chickens are running around outside and the fish are in the pond right next to the kitchen. After several photo-ops with the locals and a quick game of limbo with some bamboo lying next to the road, this meal seemed to be one the best we have had so far on the trip.

 

After the late lunch, we started the bus ride back to the main city, Guangzhou. The farms and cities that we passed are very different from what we are used to seeing in America. Many workers use hoes and their hands to tend to the needs of their farms and the cities were full of several different social-economical types with construction around every turn. Once we arrived back at the hotel, the group walked around Beijing Road, which is the most popular shopping part of the city, it can be described similar to an outdoor mall that is 5 miles long. There was mostly clothing and toy stores and a lot of shoe stores. 

After a few minutes of shopping, we had a buffet-style dinner with traditional Chinese food options. This buffet offered dessert in form of cookies and ice cream. The ice cream flavors were banana nut with a green color to it, a purple ice cream that tasted like sweet potato, and a white ice cream that reminded us of birthday cake. They also had a man grilling "steak" which had a big line of us trying to get some. It was pretty thin cut and really greasy but it was a nice change from the traditional food that we have been eating.  

After dinner we walked over and took a Pearl River cruise. This was a great way to see the beautiful riverside at night. The huge skyscrapers around the river are all lit up with various colors and change every few minutes to a different pattern. The main attraction was the Canton Tower. It is a tv and also the 2nd tallest tower in the world that is just used for recreation. On top of the tower there is even a ride that takes you up even higher and drops you. The cruise itself only took about an hour, but the sights are priceless and awe-inspiring.