Augustana senior Kyle Nelson and his teammates are in China. He will be blogging regularly on D3hoops.com about the team’s journey.

After a day fully devoted to basketball, today was a change of pace and was focused on tourism and learning. Our day began at nine o’clock in the morning and we headed to an ecological garden in a township on the outskirts of Wuhan. The ecological garden was a government-funded group that would bring in local farmers, free of charge, and teach them how and what to grow in the region to be successful and profitable. We wandered the grounds briefly before getting back on the bus to head to a crane factory in town.

The crane factory was one that built the massive cranes that are used to construct very tall buildings. The most noticeable thing was how bad the working environment was and the limited protection that the workers had while operating heavy machinery. The money that these employees got paid was not nearly enough to compensate for the risk they were taking. I believe their payments came to about 300 United States dollars a month.
 
After the crane factory we walked around the town a bit then headed to the tea and rice fields. Here we saw the large plots of land where they would grow and sell their products. Dr. Norm Moline, the Augustana geography professor who has been so instrumental in making this trip great, and our local guide spent some time explaining how these products worked best for this land and environment.

We had three more stops on our trip for the day. The first was to the government building of the township. Here we spent some time listening to one of the town officials speak about the future of the township and how it was expanding.

The next two stops were factories that were complete 180 degree turns from what he had been seeing. They were in a “High Tech Economic Zone”

The first was a company that built laser machines that served many purposes. Some examples were machines that reduced wrinkles, could help with skin cancer and could remove tattoos. The company officials explained how they were already successful in Europe, but were seeking to gain FDA approval so they could begin sales in the United States. One of the employees demonstrated the use of the machine on assistant coach Larry Schulte, but everyone was rather skeptical if it actually had any effect. Finally, the last stop on our non-stop tour was a factory that produced goods ranging from popsicles to baby formula. We were taken inside of their warehouse and watched the assembly line workers package and make these good that were shipped to all corners of China.
 
Overall, it was a very informative day and a good learning experience to see how business operated in a foreign nation.
 
Off to Xi’an in the morning!
 
— Kyle Nelson