A day off in Guangdong

Before I begin, I'll start with a disclaimer.  I said goodbye to Liz today.  She's the love of my life and, after three weeks of sharing this Fellowship with her, she had to return today.  The drawback of working with family is it becomes difficult for us to coordinate time off sometimes.  Everyone back home has been great to allow us to leave together for three weeks.  While it is a slightly slower time of the year, with both Liz and I gone, that's 1/3 of the farm's workforce being halfway around the world.  So while the travel part of my Fellowship is only halfway over, I'll have to finish it without her.  It'll be great, but it won't be the same.

Yesterday (Saturday the 27th) was a day of "Rest".  A day of rest on the calendar rarely means that on this trip, it just means that we don't have Fellowship meetings or trips planned, instead its what we want to do that day (or more commonly, its traveling from one province to another.)  Saturday Liz and I took advantage of our last day traveling together to hit a few markets, walk the streets of Guangzhou, and take in some culture.  We first hit an art market.  About a quarter of a mile, both sides of the road lined with shops selling mostly paintings and calligraphy.  We saw a few items we liked, but nothing we bought.  What I liked was it was one of the first markets that we had gone in that was obviously NOT geared for tourists - foreign or domestic.  The sold most of the art in frames, and most of it was pretty large (nothing that anyone would ever be able to fit in a suitcase.)  We just spent some time walking and looking.  Also pleasant was the low pressure nature - no constant sales people pushing their goods in your face.  From there we grabbed a cab to the Antique Street Market.  This place was again, not a place catering to tourists.  There were some obviously very high quality products (thing 6 foot by 4 foot ivory carvings for $750,000 and the like) and some not so old.  I got a kick out of walking by stores stocked with appealingly old furniture, advertised as such, and then watching the shopkeeper, just outside the shop, taking new tables and wearing them with scrapers and sandpaper, and then oiling them.  I'll give them credit, they were darn good at it, but it was a kind of giveaway.  From there we walked about a mile and half to the Chen Family Academy, now the Guandong Folk Art Museum.

This was a building built in 1890's by the 72 Chen Family Clans from the various villages across Guandong Province to act a chamber of commerce and family boarding house for the students who went to Guangzhou to prepare for their exams.  The buildings themselves where the best works of art in the place, but there were also some very impressive items on display:

The buildings themselves had amazingly detailed brick
carvings and sculpturing on the roof lines

The courtyards were filled with bonsais of various size
and specie

This work of art was about 5 feet wide by 3 feet
high, and is some of the most detailed, intricate
needlework I have ever seen.  This is just silk
needlework on a silk background.  Amazing

Guangdong Province

Today was a good, but low key day.  It featured two good meetings, and a very good lunch in between.

I started with a meeting with the Provincial fertilizer and soil testing lab.  You may have noticed a lot about fertilizer in my meetings.  It's a really big deal here.  Some neat things were learned today - vertigation is the new technology being promoted.  saves fertilizer, uses less water, and takes less manpower.  They are in the process of launching a new database that was really impressive.  Its set up for farmers, and is all done through a touchscreen.  The GUI was set up as follows - from the homepage, you click the crop that you are growing (people have an "assigned" crop to grow, they can double crop with something different if they wish, but the primary crop is the one that the Government determines is best for the site, although some sites are allowed to grow multiple things, and the programming allows for that.)  From there every county that grows that crop is listed, you select the county, and drill down as the menus decrease from county to city to village until finally you get a map of every farming plot in the village.  You can then click on the plot you are seeking information on, and it displays the history of soil tests on the site (every plot has a test at least once a year).  You then plug in the target production, and it gives you a chemical treatment guide that prints with one additional click.  The sheet includes the fertilizer formulation, the frequency it should be applied, when during the year to apply it, and any ph adjustments that should be made.  It was really, really cool.

After an extended lunch, and a short break at the hotel, I headed over to the Ocean and Fisheries management office for the Province.  From 30 years ago until 3-5 years ago, China had one mission - economic development.  Expansion of agriculture, fisheries extraction, industry, mining - everything.  Over the last 3-5 years there has been a shift - environmental conservation is rising in importance.  Oddly enough, things here don't happen like in the US.  Here the government has shifted the focus, and the people and industry are slowly coming around.  But government is driving the attitude shift among the people, not the other way around like in the US. Much easier in a communistic society.  On the fisheries side it is even more drastic.  fisherman are being encouraged to leave the industry.  China is the only country in the world whose aquaculture exceeds it wild caught harvest.  Not only land based, or offshore, but deep see culture in pens of such products as cobia, grouper and pompano are produced in large numbers.  They are also doing some amazing work in restoration of endangered species with huge breeding and release programs for turtles (freshwater and sea,) crocodiles, crabs, sturgeon, and even giant salamanders.

Gaungdong province alone has 103 aqutic nature reserves covering 1,250,000 acres.  22 of these have comprehensive facilities - labs, outreach centers, rescue centers, research faciliteis, nature reserve security, and administration offices.  The Provincial and central government is investing $35 million USD each year to improve those facilities and to build more.

We don't hear about this in China.  We hear the negative side, and I won't try to sugar coat it, China has a long way to go on improving the environment.  It needs stronger laws, and it needs to enforce them.  It has the technology, it has the skilled people, and it has the right ideas.  It just needs to continue this increasing focus on the environment.  It was heartening to see.

Well, that's all for now.  As always, feel free to share this around on facebook and such, as we still can't!