May 15

May 15, 2017

This morning we went to where they make terra cotta warriors souvenirs. The government owns the facility and makes everything from ancient Chinese furniture, miniature terra cotta warriors, life size terra cotta warriors, and can even sculpt your personal head onto a life size terra cotta warrior. It costs 6,000 yuan for a head sculpture which is $869.70 in the United States. To make the warriors they use the same clay from the same area the original ones were made. To make the bodies they use a plaster cast and the heads are hand sculpted. The original warriors’ bodies were cast out of bamboo molds and each face was hand sculpted. They also make furniture that they hand paint and cover with 30 layers of lacquer, they apply one layer a day. One piece of furniture is roughly 19,000 yuan which is $2,754 in the US.

We then went to the actual Terracotta Warrior Museum. The warriors were originally built for Emperor Shi of the Qin Dynasty, which was approximately 2,000 years ago. They were built to protect the Emperor after he died. It took 38 years and 70,000 people to build the tomb and warriors and all the people that helped to build it were killed so that no one would know where his tomb was. In 1974 a farmer was digging for a well when he uncovered the statues. It was really amazing to get to see all the different statues and the pits that they are in. It's hard to believe that they are over 2,000 years old because they are in great shape, except the ones that are busted. This is something that you read about in history books or see on the history channel but most never get to see it and we did so that's pretty neat.

We then visited Yin-Qiao Dairy Group which was a very impressive facility. They are a dairy manufacturing company which produce dairy products such as whole pure milk, yogurt, and baby milk replacer. Something we found very interesting was that there milk is treated in such a way that it is able to be safely stored at room temperature for 6-8 months, it is served this way as well. The company had a vast range of flavors of milk such as banana, walnut, strawberry, peanut, Juju beans, and of course chocolate. Yin-Qiao is the largest dairy producer in Northwest China sourcing there milk from 15,000 cows distributed amongst 30 farms. They process 1500 tons of milk daily and the processing facility runs 24 hours a day. The facility was very advanced, very similar to something you would see in the states. They were very welcoming and eager to engage in conversations about the industry.

We then departed to visit a small swine production facility of 20 sows. He feeds three times per day with a diet consisting of corn and wheat bran. This was placed the whole grains into a mixer/grinder then fed that to the pigs. In China swine is sold strictly on live weight with an average market price of approximately 60 RMB/Kilo . This producer sold his pigs at 330 pounds (150 Kg) and stated that it took him approximately 7 months.

To finish the day off the entire group received professional foot massages, which in China apparently is actually an entire body massage. This lasted for an hour and was an amazing massage as well as very reasonably priced. We then went to Pizza Hut and got 'normal' food that everyone was very excited to have. Tomorrow we plan to ride the bullet train which everyone is very excited for. Good night from Xi'An.