Saturday, May 14

Greetings from China, 

Today we started off leaving the hotel bright and early and took a bus for half an hour to the fish market, Huangsha Aquatic Product Market.  Our translator told us that on an average day there is an average of 100 million yuan (16 million dollars), from 500 million tons of fish and seafood.  This particular fish market is the third largest in China and sells to over 200 other provinces.  Everything was alive and swimming, with more colors and shapes than you can imagine!  There were things such as alligator, eels, crawfish, bullfrogs, snakes, turtles, giant salamanders, and many other assortments of fish.  

Our next stop was Shamain Island, an island located directly in the middle of mainland China.  This island is European based because after the Chinese lost in the Opium War, the Europeans took over the island and therefore the island still has the European heritage.  It is a 200 m by 800 m island, and all the building look like we could be in London.  We went into the White Swan hotel, which was also the first Five Star Hotel in China.  Some of the locals were doing activities such as hackie-sack and dancing and a few of us jumped in on the action.   However, the biggest surprise of the White Swan hotel is that we actually got Facebook!  Probably the only place in China that’ll happen, and it was kind of hard to leave it. 

Then we made our way to the Fruit and Vegetable market where they have 12 million tons of turnover a day,  5 million tons of that being fruit and 7 million tons being vegetables, with half of that being used daily in Guangzhou.  The fruits and vegetables came from all over China, and all over the world. The size of the market was 3,300 hectors (1320 acres).  It was hard for us to buy products because it was only sold in bulk.  Some of the vendors were nice enough to cut up some watermelon and kiwi for us to try.  A few of us bought some fruit such as mangos, elderberries, and kiwi (which we got through airport security in our carry-ons).  

To finish off our day we headed to the airport to fly to Xi'an.  It's about a 3 hour flight, which was delayed roughly 45 minutes.  To fill our time we played cards and took full advantage of the free Wi-Fi, a delicacy here in China.  We are looking forward to our time in Xi'an during the next few days. 

Ty and Laura 

P.S. Don't worry parents, all of your children are accounted for!  :)