Strawberry Picking in China!

I've broken one of the cardinal rules of touring China.  Don't eat fruit that hasn't been washed.  But I went strawberry picking!  And the deal was, you could eat as many as you wanted for free, you only had to pay for the ones you take home.  What a deal!  So I ate a bunch of unwashed strawberries and they were FANTASTIC!  I'll let you know later if that was a mistake.

Today was Women's Day so Vivian and a bunch of other women at the plant got the afternoon off and they invited me to go strawberry picking with them and bring Smudgie.  I thought it would be fun for Smudgie and I haven't eaten strawberries in too long and the weather was absolutely gorgeous so how could I refuse?

The Building

Indoors there were ready-picked strawberries you could buy

Rows and rows of greenhouses

Opposite the greenhouses

I had Smudgie on a leash but it was beginning to be too much to juggle him, my purse, and my strawberry bucket, so I set him free.  He was pretty well behaved.

 

 

When I finished picking, Smudgie and I waited outside the greenhouse for everyone else to be done and he was the star of the show.  People we didn't know were crowding around, trying to feed him strawberries and taking pictures and video.  Black pomeranians are very rare in China, I'm told.  As we were walking back to the building to pay, we saw a big marching line of soldiers.
 

There was communist music (red army choir type stuff) playing as they walked by.  That was pretty neat.  The guy running the place gave me my strawberries for free, which was unnecessary but super cool!  Smudgie's all dirty now so it's time to give him a bath.  Until next time!