The Brewery, Crab Island, and Refugees

July 1, 2008- Tuesday

Our personalities are starting to come out. People are expressing their opinions and we are starting to learn the backgrounds of each individual. Thus, we have learned what each person will bring to the group and to the trip. We are all starting to miss certain things about home. Whether it be the convenience of the internet or food that you don’t have to eat with chopsticks, today we were all saying, “I would give anything for a ….” Don’t get me wrong. We are doing great and we love it here, but this is a key point about study abroad-there’s stuff you just have to work through.

We had to report to the bus at 7:30 a.m. this morning for a day long field trip. Since this was an hour earlier that usual, we opted not to run. We rode the bus for about an hour and a half to the YangJing Brewery. On the way there we saw some small fields of corn that we had heard about in class. They really did look like they couldn’t be any bigger than a front yard of a city home. Beijing has six outer belts (like Columbus has the one 270) and we drove out to the sixth ring to get to our destination. We were able to see a lot of greenery on our way there as the sixth belt is fairly new and the area between the fifth and the sixth is not completely taken over.

We have heard a lot about YangJing since we’ve been here as we have seen it all over and it is a major Olympic sponsor. The word YangJing is the former name of the city Beijing. They opened in 1980 out in the countryside near Beijing by the White Yang River. Now, due to urbanization, YangJing is very near to the edge of the city. They have always been number one in sales and profit of all the beer companies in the China. Their beer is exported to over 20 countries and they say it only took them 20 years to grow as fast as other companies grew in 100 years. They have 85% of the Beijing market share. Nationwide, there are 36,000 employees, 10,000 of which live in Beijing. Currently, their whole process is done with computers and machines imported from Germany. Eighty percent of the grain they use is imported from Canada, Australia, and Germany and 20% of it comes from China. None of their grain comes from the U.S.. The mixture they have includes rice, barley, enzymes, and water. They said the mixture is 30% rice and 70% barley.

When I worked at GM, they spoke of the company in China that was making their new machines and said that most of the people working at that company lived in dormitories right on the factory grounds. I asked if they had any dormitories at this location. They said they did, but only a few since most people in Beijing rent their own apartments. There are 38 companies affiliated with this main company such as the people who make the bottle caps and recycling companies for the bottles. This provides more jobs to the employment needs of China. Within their company, they also make medicine and research different types of biotechnology. Ashley asked what they did with the distillers grain and the lady who seemingly did not want to be there giving the tour said it went for animal feed. Good question, Ashe. I asked if they work three shifts, 7 days a week and she said they did 24 hours a day from April to October which is the busy season for beer. She didn’t say how long individual employee shifts last though. The other months of the year they do not work weekends. Sometimes they hire temporary workers or young people and they live in the dormitories as they might be moving from place to place or not want to live with their parents. I can’t imagine temporary workers in the United States staying on the grounds of their employer practically 24/7. We looked at the seven vats they had where they boil the beer and the 80 vats where it sets and ferments.

I asked if they get their grain in China from a specific farmer or of it comes from a company. She said they get it from a company who provides specific farmers with seed and a contract to sell to them at the end of the growing season.

We boarded the bus and road another interesting place, Crab Island. This place was similar to a BearCreek Farms sort of operation, complete with all kinds of farm animals, several entertainment complexes, hotels, and restaurants. We went here as this study tour program is based on agriculture and this is a major form of Agritourism. Ashe, Jess, and I had a hoot listening to some of the comments our classmates were making. Frankly, I decided that this being our first farm field trip, they would have never made it in the Dominican where we went on amazing, adventurous field trips everyday and I look forward to seeing their reactions when we go to the farmland of Inner Mongolia in two weeks. DangFong said she would order our lunch and that we should walk around the complex for a while until it is ready. Oddly, they had two stalks of corn growing in several pots right outside of the restaurant. I was taking a picture of it since it was so weird and Deryck, one of our tour mates from New York City, said “Ah, bamboo.” I said, “That is not bamboo. That is corn.” Geepers creepers! We walked around and looked at several decorative fish ponds, a well that you turn a crank to pull up a bucket of water, some more plants, and a pretty walking bridge. We saw a beautiful couple getting wedding pictures in the pretty scenery.

When we came back in for lunch we waited for just a little while before the endless amounts of food started being placed on the lazy Susans at our tables. In the following order, they brought out these dishes one at a time: sausage sliced into diagonal pieces that was rather fatty, bean curd bites that tasted like pizza flavored dog food, boiled cabbage; a dish with all sorts of starches including: sweet potatoes, sweet corn, and a couple types of bread; a big hunk of tofu in soy sauce, small bits of beef still on the bone in sauce with garlic, steamed broccoli and mushrooms; raw cucumbers, radishes, and onions with plum sauce; two different kinds of crab that we had to work really hard to dig out without the nutcracker tools, beef and spinach sandwiches, bread rolls with spinach inside, and finally some real tough steak. When you eat Chinese like that, you know from the beginning only to take about one bite worth of each dish. Also, before we started eating, they brought out a bucket of LIVE crabs and had us look at them to decide if we wanted them or not. They passed our inspection and were pretty good when they came back cooked. Ha! DongFang said this meal was part of our program fee, so we didn’t have to pay and we headed outside to go on our tour of the facility.

Outside of the restaurant, there were two donkeys with carts waiting to take us on our tour. The reason we visited Crab Island is because they use the grounds as a means of agritourism. They show many aspects of farming and agriculture to people who normally do not get to see stuff like that. We all climbed up in the carts, sat on the benches, and were off on our big adventure. This facility is very self sufficient. They process human and animal waste at a water treatment plant on the grounds. They utilize the waste as fertilizer and generate power as well through methane gas. We took pictures and tried to understand the process they utilized to make use of the animal waste they had several vats labeled with signs. DongFang translated what the tour guide was saying, but about all I got was something about a sedimentation pond. It seemed as if they drained moisture off at one vat and then processed that liquid into another level of clear ness and kept going. I guess I could google it if I really wanted to.

The donkey carts took us from place to place all over the grounds. We saw some beautiful ponds with some neat looking lily pads and flowers. There were some big, dirty cages full of chickens that had laid eggs in some baskets. You know, that is pretty cool to the people from the city of 20 million. There was also a big cage of probably 200 ducks that were extremely dirty. There was a whole bunch of celery hearts thrown in there on top of the mud, I guess for the ducks to eat. It was not a pretty sight. There were baskets available and you could pay to go gather eggs from either the ducks or the chickens. We didn’t participate. There was also an area that had kiddy rides and a pretty man made water fall.

One building was full of animal specimens in formaldehyde. I mean they had everything from monkey embryos to sharks. The place was weird. They also had all sorts of stuffed wild game in there including a hedge hog. One area had a petting zoo of sorts. They had a bunch of monkeys and it was really fun to watch the mother monkeys carry around her baby. There were pins of pigs, goats, and sheep as well as a whole bunch of pens of different types of big dogs. The whole place was dirty and pretty much sad. It did not showcase a quality picture of agriculture to the city folk. There were cows, deer, ostriches, and camels all in fenced in areas. They had barns they could go in, but most of them were out showing face to all the eager visitors

One area was pretty neat. They were all set up to make pottery; complete with wheels and kilns, but no one was working in there. Sorry, Jaime! I took pictures of the facilities they had though. The donkey ride took us all over. We were in the second car, so we didn’t experience the wrath that the lead cart did or we were better able to prepare ourselves when we heard the others moan and groan. At one point, they went over a big curb. Our driver decided to just have us get out and walk. We walked down a long lane and looked at several green houses with brick fronts. They were growing tomatoes, squash, and peanuts among other things. In between the green houses, they were growing other items such as corn. We were able to see the clear plastic ground coverings we had learned about in class that help keep the moisture in the ground.

On our way out we saw another couple getting wedding photos. We have seen this several times throughout the city. They are all dressed up in their wedding clothes getting pictures. It looks really fun and they always look adorable. After taking a bunch of pictures of the beautiful lily pads, DongFang led us to another area of the grounds where they were making tofu. It was a dirty room, but they were grinding soy down and had a big block of tofu lying out. He wasn’t in the act of making it so it was difficult to see what he was doing, but we all wondered if what we ate for lunch came from there. After that we looked at an example Hutong set up where there are four houses that are placed toward a central courtyard. We toured the homes and looked at the courtyard, trying to imaging what it would be like for four generations to live like this and then headed to look at the area where they raise the crabs and fish. There were several in ground pools of fish in a big barn type area.

When we finally boarded the bus to come home DongFang handed out rice cakes for a snack. They had a sugar coating and weren’t too bad. She said, “These are good because they make your mouth happy and you don’t get too fat.” I don’t know if it was this time or not, but she has told us that in China when your child goes away for more than a month you check them over upon their return to see if they how well the person did taking care of them. She said that she did not want us looking like refugees when we get home. She has said this several times and every time it makes me laugh.