A Short Letter Home

Roll out the barrel

Hey, we had an honest to Ghandi field trip on Saturday. Who would've thought? Friday afternoon, Thad gave us a call and invited us to take a little day trip to his hometown. He said he was taking some people to check out some high-tech factories there and they would be honored to have us accompany them. I was game, Yau Neih was slightly interested, and the girls thought they were in for the most boring day of their lives. But with some skillful negotiating, we talked them into it and agreed to go along. When we told this to Thad, he told us that it was actually an outing for the whole English department staff. We would drive with him and his wife in the school's SUV while the teachers followed in a chartered bus. It would be an hour and a half trip each way, but given the scenery around here I wasn't complaining. My only regret was that I couldn't ride on the bus, where I'm sure all the action was going to be.

Saturday morning came and, as is our custom, we were out in front of our building at 8:00. This time, however, we gave our apologies to our fellow hikers rather than joining them on the weekly hike. (Actually, only Michael, Matthew and one of Matthew's students were ready to go at eight. The college students were still getting breakfast.) The bus and SUV were awaiting us. The best part was that Thad realized that the SUV might be cramped with six people and asked me if I minded riding the bus with the teachers. I have to wonder if he read my mind or if our apartment is indeed bugged, like we joke about. So I climbed aboard the bus and grabbed a window seat. The bus ride actually turned out to be a bit uneventful. The teachers did behave slightly like school kids on a field trip, but no footballs were thrown out the window or anything. Plus all the chatter was in Chinese, so I couldn't really join in. But I did get to enjoy the scenery and chatted a bit with Licha, the teacher who sat down next to me, and Sandra, a professor from Montreal who was visiting the college. Licha kind of appointed herself as my tour guide on and off throughout the day.

One thing I should have mentioned that this high tech factory--the pride of the county--is a brewery. I realize that brewing beer is a craft, and like any craft there is honor in performing it well. But beer is such a pedestrian commodity I doubt if I could ever approach it seriously. Fortunately, my Chinese ability is nowhere near the level it would have to be for me to crack dumb jokes and make a jerk of myself. Anyway, I digress. We arrived in the town of Yunxian (At the time, all I knew was "云县". I was calling it "Yun Beehive" until I was able to look up the actual name.) and pulled into the lot of the Lancang River Beer company. 'Twas a nice looking place. We were escorted into the conference room, which was truly a classy place. After the obligatory introductions of the company bigwigs, we were treated to a video about the company. It was a bit of a flashback to my old a/v production days. There were a few digital effects that were new, but essentially it was the same sort of thing I might have worked on back in the eighties. I couldn't understand the narration, of course, but the visuals said that Yunnan is a great place to make beer and they ship their fine beer all over China.

After the vid, we were treated to a tour of the plant.... sort of. Now, I've been on a tour of the old Rainier Brewery in Seattle, back before the company was swallowed up by some larger corporation and the brewery was converted to a coffee roasting plant. I know how these things are supposed to go. We skipped over ll of the brewing part and went straight to the bottling. We started with the recycling center, where stacks of used bottles awaited their turn in a big machine that cleaned them for reuse. Then we saw the line where the bottles were filled, inspected, labeled and boxed. I have to admit that it was quite impressive, though I couldn't help thinking about the opening to Laverne and Shirley, One odd thing that I hadn't considered before is that I haven't seen any evidence of kegs in China. (not that I've really looked for them) Everything seems to be bottles. Anyway, we then strolled over to the labs where folks in white lab coats are doing something scientific looking. Whether it was quality control or R&D, I have no idea. As we were leaving that area, we were treated to a nice view of the adjacent river. (I'm assuming it's the Lancang, given the company name.)

After this, we climbed back aboard the bus and drove across the street. Apparently the company, in addition to producing alcoholic beverages, also produces a bottled tea. We were all given samples of the product and then were ushered into a... big empty room. I was told that this was the room in which they stored and dried their tea leaves. Since it was not the season for tea leaves, the space was empty. Clean, too. The guy in charge of the tea manufacturing showed us this and another room filled with idle machinery. He talked quite a bit about it all and nobody bothered translating for me. Like most folks, he seemed quite happy to talk about his work. From there we went upstairs and looked over the bottling line. This was in full production and we could see the whole process from forming the plastic bottles to packing the filled and labeled bottles for shipment. According to the honcho giving the tour, one part of the system, a filtering machine, is so high tech that it could be used to create weapons. They needed to get permission from the UN to have the machine and have to pay through the nose for the privilege to use it. Make beer, not war, I always say.

Anyway, that pretty much ended the tour save for a restroom break. I think I'll tell you about the second half of my day in the next post. It was a good time and my only regret is that I never once thought to teach the teachers how to sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." But maybe that's just as well....

posted by John @ 12:52 AM