May 27th, Xinyi 8:11am

Everyone is feeling sick. Jenny's mom has a fever, Jenny's stomach is still reeling... we skipped breakfast this morning as no one felt ill until we ate at that restaurant. I'm really hoping I don't get sick. Otherwise, they might not let me back into Taiwan and in consequence home. {They're pretty serious about quarantine coming into and from China, probably because of bird flu. I didn't know until this trip that they have heat sensors at airports to monitor the body temperatures of travelers entering both Taiwan and the U. S.}

We've been eating a lot of fish here. Some of it has been pretty good. Some, not so much. {As a general rule, if they boil the fish and have very little covering it, the fish is fresh. The more fried and the more vegetable they cover it with, the older the fish is. There was one fish in particular that even covered and fried one could tell that the fish was very old. Yuck.}

I have accumlated 2 bottle of rice wine. It's apparently kind of a joke that I can drink it so... I'm sure Grampa will enjoy a bottle.

I've been stared at a lot in Xingyi. Kids look at me with wonder, and the men just stare. {I don't think too many Americans/ Europeans come this deep into Guizhou.}

Today we're going to the waterfall. I think it will be at least three hours until we get there. In the meantime, I will eat my powerbar and doze. We're off!

My own observations are that around Xingyi they grow a lot of corn, whereas near Anshun and Guiyang there's much more rice being grown. I've also seen banana plants in the forest of 10,000 peaks. They also grow a lot of watermelon and pumpkin in Guizhou too. It is very smoggy/ foggy in the mornings. It seems that it has been very dry here this season.

They roast corn over a fire and sell it on the side of the road.

Mou Tai is the top of the line rice wine, which takes 5 years to make.

{This is when it started getting difficult to write in my journal. Our first stop of the day was at the Beipanjiang Bridge, the highest bridge in China. The bus dropped us off on one side and we walked across it in the rain and fog. The pictures don't really show how high the bridge is. The bridge spans over Huanjiang Gorge and the bridge shares its name with a railroad bridge built in 2002 and touted as the bridge that would help the region (which on earns 10% of the national average's income) become more successful).

After that, we had lunch over looking Huangguoshu Falls, which according to the tour guide is the third largest waterfall in the world. I have not been able to find any information that verifies this. It is, however the largest waterfall in Asia, and it's name literally translates into "yellow fruit tree falls" . The fruit wasn't ripe when we were there so I'm not sure what it tastes like. The waterfall is beautiful! I tried to upload a picture from where we're eating lunch. If you look carefully towards to the left and half way up, those tiny itty bitty dots are people.

The waterfall is beautiful, and the Chinese say it is the only waterfall you can see from five different angles. In fact you walk around the front of it, then behind it, and can actually touch the waterflow. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.








Oh they also had a bonsai garden. One of the trees in the garden actually shakes when it is rubbed. Something about "nerves" in the bark. Again, haven't been able to track info about it down.