Wonder-sun Dairy

We visited the Heilongjiang Wandashan Harbin Milk Products Co., Ltd. (aka Wonder-sun Dairy) near the Harbin airport. This government-owned company has several dairy facilities in China, with the main products being milk powders. This facility, however, built in 2000 at a cost of $20M, produces mostly liquid products. In the entrance lobby, they have a display of over 100 different products they produce (both liquid and powder).

I have noted two things about Chinese marketing. Chinese companies pay considerable attention to their brand, because the Chinese consumer has a high degree of brand loyalty. And Chinese companies can segment markets in ways I never dreamed of. The display above included milk powders for pregnant women, for middle-aged and old people, for students, for infants with zinc added, for infants with calcium added, etc., etc.

This is the yogurt packaging line. All the yogurt that I have encountered here has been the drinkable type of yogurt.

Dr. Mike Vayda did an excellent job selling the Vermont dairy industry, while we enjoyed samples of several of Wonder-sun's products: Black Land Pasture milk (a premium product), regular whole milk, drinkable yogurt, orange flavored milk and strawberry flavored milk. The four milk products were all in UHT packaging, with a shelf-life of 6 months or more.

To the right of Dr. Vayda are Dr. Wang Li, Director of New Product R&D and Mr. Liu Qing Quan, President of Wonder-sun. Dr. Wang studied under Dr. Guo.

Following the plant visit, Mr. Liu hosted lunch for us back in the city. Today's lunch included caviar, reflecting the Russian influence in this area.

I have not previously posted a photo of the entire table for one of these unique meals, and a photo does not do it justice. But here is an attempt. Note the large variety of dishes on the lazy Susan.

Click to enlarge photos

The photos on this blog are small and contain a lot of detail. How can you see a larger picture? Just click on the picture. Works on my computer, anyway.

You can also right-click on the picture, save the file somewhere, open it with a graphics or photo program of your choice, and magnify it all you want.

Dairy Seminar

The 5th China International Dairy Development Summit Seminar is being held today and tomorrow in our hotel in Harbin. This event is sponsored by the National Dairy Engineering & Technical Research Center and the China Dairy Industry magazine. We were invited to attend the opening speeches. The person speaking (indicated by the arrow) is the host of the conference, Dr. Bao Jun, Professor and Vice President of Northeast Agricultural University. Dr. Guo is associated with this university. Secretary Allbee is at the other end of the head table.

There were about 35 people at this seminar, not counting the delegation from Vermont. As I was to gradually discover, nearly all of them were either PhD's or representatives of dairy industry companies much, much larger than anything in Vermont. They were an impressive group.

Roger was told only minutes in advance that he would be expected to speak. It was his best speech yet! I wish I had a recording of it. He closed with some memorable lines about sharing our love for the cows and our love for their products.

Following the opening speeches, we all gathered outside the hotel for a group photo.

Chairman Wang

Dinner was in a private room at the Northeast Forestry University, hosted by Mr. Wang Xue Quan, Chairman of School Council (equivalent to a university president in the US). Chairman Wang's son is at UVM.

I keep saying that these dinners are special, and they truly are. They are visual and culinary delights. And being seated at a round table is an excellent forum for conversation. Each dinner seems better than the last!

Fur Specimen Museum

The evening's activities were at the Northeast Forestry University. Dr. Yan Chun Xu gave us a tour of the Fur Specimen Museum at the university. This museum contains in one room hundreds of furs from various animals. This collection is the largest in China and is used to assist in identifying field specimens. It is especially helpful for understanding populations of endangered species.

Dr. Yan also showed us the collection of the State Forestry Administration Detecting Center of Wildlife, which helps identify specimens captured from smugglers. The two activities are similar, and often involve DNA analysis.

The two collections were fascinating, and we could have listened to Dr. Yan for a long time, but our next appointment was upon us.

Harbin Streets

I had only a little time to go out before our scheduled activities this evening. The streets were more crowded than in either Shanghai or Jinan. Of course, I am seeing only a tiny fraction of each city, so it is not possible to generalize.

The men in the distance are playing cards.

Arriving in Harbin

I knew that Harbin would be different from Shanghai and Jinan when the first advertisement in the airport was for Harbin Polarland! The weather is very pleasant here today, like a nice Vermont fall day.

Dr. Mingruo Guo met us at the airport with a warm welcome!

Harbin is a city of about 5 million people, roughly the same size as Jinan. There is considerable Russian influence here. The service directory in my hotel room is printed in three languages: Chinese, English and Russian. Note the architecture of the buildings I can see from my hotel window.

There is a cooling tower in the distance, but I do not know its use. In the U.S. we always associate cooling towers with nuclear electric plants, but I believe they can also be used for other purposes.

Cropland from the air

It was a pleasant two hour flight from Jinan to Harbin, again on a Boeing 737 operated by Shandong Airlines. The plane was about half full. I read the China Daily--an English language newspaper published by the government--on the flight. Perhaps I will have more to say about that later, when I have more time. I liked this newspaper, and it was thought provoking. For now, I will just mention one news item for the benefit of my children in college or soon to be in college: Three Chinese universities have prohibited first year students from owning computers because of computer game addiction. "The ban is to ensure they can live a good life in the future by studying hard now."

The view was cropland or cities and towns all the way. Note how every inch is tilled, and how there is an abrupt change from city/town to field.

Leaving Jinan

We left Jinan this morning. The sunshine continued today. This was the view at breakfast from the restaurant at the top of our hotel. Our hotel is casting a shadow on Quancheng Square.

Everywhere so far, we have traveled comfortably in a 20 passenger bus. Here we are leaving for the airport.

It was about 45 minutes to the airport. The road was wide and well built. Traffic was light, once outside the city. This is Margaret, Mike and Lisa in the Jinan airport. Lisa left us here. This airport was big, new and mostly empty. Perhaps the road and airport are busier at other times of the week, but the thought that comes to mind is that these facilities were intentionally built with considerable excess capacity, to handle future growth.

Doesn't Joe make a good model for selling Chery cars?

Dinner 10/13

Dinner this evening was hosted by the Jinan Foreign Trade & Economic Cooperation Bureau, represented by Xu Weizhong, Fang Li Ping, Jiang Dongfeng, Fusen Wei and Feng Yigui. Again, it was an amazing feast, this time accompanied by abundant spirits.