Blog 14: The Mighty Yangtze.

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My 5 hour bus ride to Chongqing was very uneventful. I had the usual Chinese stares from everyone else on the bus who look at you at first presumably thinking you got on by mistake, but when it becomes evident you’re staying, they forget about you and you become accepted into the circle. So the journey went, and the familiar ache in my neck let me know that at some point I had fallen asleep against the window. I had a mild feeling of panic about halfway when it occurred to me that no one had told me what to do when I arrived in Chongqing - indeed, I didn’t know the name of my boat, or even which port I was supposed to be sailing from. Hmmm. This could prove tricky.

I needn’t have worried. When the bus stopped, I got off with everyone else to find a very nice young man clutching a piece of paper with “EDGAR” written on it in black marker pen. I was VERY happy to see him, and have never been greeted anywhere with my name like that before. I was always a bit jealous of people you see at airports who have people waiting for them with their name on paper.

He picked up my rucksack, looked like he wished he hadn’t, and then off we went. Chongqing is hilly. And busy. There are people EVERYWHERE. I know this is China, and there are people everywhere, well, everywhere, but they seemed to be particularly concentrated here.

We picked our way through the crowds and the puddles and went into a hotel and up to the 4th floor where the labels in the lift said “offices”. I was led to a waiting area for a travel agents of sorts, put my rucksack on a shelf and waited for a girl who spoke English to turn up. She soon arrived and talked me through the boat trip and asked if I wanted to upgrade from my cheapest 3rd class ticket to 2nd or perhaps 1st class. It had crossed my mind when I had paid for my 3rd class cabin, bottom of the boat, sharing room and bathroom with 5 others that it possibly wasn’t the BEST idea I’d ever had...and so when it transpired it was only a tenner to go to 2nd class, only share with 3 others and get a window, I jumped at the chance. I also paid for my trip to the 3 gorges dam and my bus ticket onward to the city of Wuhan.

All that sorted, it was 11am and I was told to be back at the office by 6pm.
Well, what to do? I knew there wouldn’t be much food on the boat and was told by the lady at the hostel I should get some noodles or something, so that’s what I did. I trekked to Carrefour to get supplies. Inundated with requests from men with poles to carry my bag, I hauled myself up the hill and across to the supermarket. I tried to drag it out as long as I could, after all, I had plenty of time to kill but a supermarket, you know, there’s only so much you can do...

On my way back, I popped into various places to try and get some credit on my Chinese phone. I have tried to do this several times but to no avail. I am currently on a Beijing SIM card - I have several, and it seems that if you are outside of the city where you got the SIM card, they really aren’t a fan of crediting you...anyway, I managed to find a nice man with a very sweet little girl who kept hiding behind him to get me some credit. Once that was accomplished, I set off back for the hotel. I had noticed that one of the other labels on the floors said “tea house” so figured I could sit and drink tea for a few hours reading my book...this is the thing with China. If you don’t have anywhere to be, there aren’t many places for you to go.

I went up to the 24th floor for a spectacular view of the river and an unending cup of jasmine tea. I settled down with my book and began my wait.

The river itself, is a slow thick brown creature that looks like it would be more at home in a chocolate factory than anywhere else. It was incredibly misty in Chongqing, and I had noticed an earlier warning sign that said “Chongqing is often rainy and fogging. Please take care walking and driving”. I had heard of its excessive heat, but this dankness hung in the air and I was glad for a jumper.

It finally got to 6pm and I went downstairs and got led down towards the docks. Again, on my way down I was pestered by men wanting to carry my bags...they grab your arm and don’t want to let you slip through their fingers. “bu yaw, bu yaw” I was saying and waving them off. My English speaking guide, who didn’t bat an eyelid the whole time I was being molested turned around incredulously - “You speak Chinese??!”. I smiled grimly. Some.

There are giant cable cars set up along the river that lower you down onto the docking platforms to get onto your boat. Ours creaked down and I hoped the very thin looking cable would hold us tight..it did. We got onto the platform and I was shown to my boat, a rather shonky looking tub but pleasant enough. I was taken to my cabin, passing by the 3rd class deck and thanking my lucky stars I had upgraded. My cabin had 4 bunks with bamboo mats on the beds, a pillow and duvet, some cupboard space, token flask of hot water, a toilet with shower head over it and a big window that showed me up close and personal for the first time, the swirling water that was going to be my home for the next few days.

While I was putting my things away, a lady came into the cabin, and I gave a cheerful “Ni hao”. She said hello back and asked me something in Chinese. There was a man with her who I took to be her husband. He was very adamant that I should get myself upstairs to the 4th floor for some reason and wouldn’t stop until I actually went up the stairs...turns out he wanted me to get my deck pass. So I did. I was now allowed...outside!

I went back down and finished sorting my things out, and then went up on the deck to see what was what. I sat on the edge on a little plastic stool and surveyed what was going on. The deck had been set up with little tables and chairs with a basket of sunflower seeds on each table, and I was quickly given a cup of tea. The deck was already full of Chinese, and quickly overfilling. People were talking and playing cards and I guess this is the first time I saw Chinese people “on holiday”. Although this was the cheapest boat, I could tell they were mostly reasonably well off people, all were well dressed. The men wearing proper trousers and shoes, the women all in nice dresses, and everyone looked pleased to be there. I had been sat for about ten minutes when someone came towards me and I recognised her as the lady from my cabin. She took my tea off me, got me to my feet, and taking my elbow, steered me determinedly to where she was sitting with the man I had seen earlier. We sat, and tried to speak, but when that didn’t work, we contented ourselves with amicably sitting whilst they spoke between themselves. A family came and sat next to us and I could tell that the man was asking the young girl if she spoke English and she said she did a bit but was too shy to try talking to me.

And then it started getting dark, and the photography started.

It would appear that my man with a very expensive looking Nikon camera was quite the photographer. Or at least he thought he was. He took lots of slightly blurry pictures of the lights that were coming on and would show me proudly what he had taken, and I would nod and say “Hun hau” or “how cun” (very good, beautiful), and he would motion for me to take a picture which I would, but I can’t take night pictures without a solid surface which is why I wasn’t taking any pictures and knew the ones he was making me take would be rubbish. And he would look at them, shake his head and then show me his again. This went on for some time, punctuated by him insisting I stand up next to the lights while he took a picture for me on my camera. Well, of course, they were all terrible, not so much his fault, but it was very hard to keep a straight face and admire how great his pictures were...when he finally grew bored of this, he cranked out the vac packed meat.

Let me explain a couple of things.

All over China, people are eating things out of tightly wrapped ambiguously labelled plastic wrappers. Sometimes, these vac packs have little windows where one can see it is a chicken foot, or some kind of meat from some kind of animal. The fact that it is vac packed and hanging up in shelves on the supermarket, and not refrigerated or fresh, frightens me a little bit even though common sense tells me vac pack is fine....

Well I have managed to avoid having to eat any vac packed meat for seven months now. And yet here I was, in my last week in China, being offered gallantly an individual packet of.. something... it was greyish brown in colour, the slices of which had been cut into squares. I nibbled a corner. There was a bit of jelly on it. I drank some tea and nibbled a bit more. To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as I had feared, but it wasn’t great either. I managed to finish it. To be given another. The second was better than the first on account of this one being packed with so much chilli, that was all I could taste. The meat was not sliced and had a rougher texture. Then the main bag was produced from under the table. About the size of a carrier bag. And there was a picture of a spayed out roasted duck on the front. So. Two things became apparent very quickly. The creature I was eating was evidently duck. And there were a lot of these things to get through.

I only got halfway through my third. Held onto it for a little while, and then excused myself to go to bed.

I was first in the cabin. Great I thought. I can have a shower, put my reading light on and read my book. Lovely. I was just collecting my shower stuff together, when the lady of earlier came in, grabbed her stuff and leapt into the bathroom. And showered. For ages. Bah. Usurped at the last minute.

The boat was under way; I was lying on my bamboo mat, reasonably comfortable. I had been drifting in and out of sleep and had my alarm set for 6.30am. All I knew was that the boat was making a stop at Fengdu, a ghost city, at 7am and all I needed to do was throw some clothes on.

I needn’t have worried. At 5.30am music began to be piped into my room and my cabin mates were up. Remember, when China is awake this means lights on, hot water poured, chattering at full volume. There is no rest for lazy westerners who were planning an extra hour.
I got up and took an apple onto the deck to be faced with a very early and chilling fog. You couldn’t see out onto the river more than a few feet. Occasionally a fishing boat would motor past, and eventually as the mist started to lift I could make out the land next to where we were parked and could see a pagoda on the top of a tree covered hill. So this was Fengdu.

Fengdu is a Chinese city with temples etc. I have heard that it is called a ghost city because there were 2 “superbeings” who had magic stones and merged their family names to become Yin Wang which means “ruler of hell”, and so Fengdu became a mystical and terrible place. I tagged along with a group of English Cambridge students I had discovered and up we went to the gates of hell itself to see what it was all about.

Well, there are Halloween type masks that one can buy, and some kind of gimmicky toy that makes “woo woooooo” ghost noises. There are tour groups in rapt awe as they are taken around all the terribly new looking temples that all have gaudy and rather terrible paint jobs and murals daubed all over them. Bits were still being built, and this ancient and old city for the dead was to be ruled by the Jade King at the mountain in the middle, but this at the time of writing was still under construction. The place seemed farcical, bemusing and all a bit random and strange. None of us really knew what to make of it...we walked round and headed back to the boat.

I went back onto top deck with my book. The sun had come out and it was getting quite hot. By lunchtime the numbers outside had dwindled to a handful and before long I found myself talking to Mr Jang, a university student from Shandong province. We chatted about my travels, about his studies and music. He kept breaking into song as we sailed along, asking me if I knew this one....did I know about that Chinese pop group....? How about this one.....? I asked him if he liked any Western music. He said he liked Westlife. He asked if I liked Westlife. I said no, that I liked rock music. He said he didn’t know any English rock music, but DID know this song...and launched into a rendition of “you are the wind beneath my wings”. I told him he had to watch “Beaches”, he’d love it. Then it finally got too hot even for the soulful Mr Jang, and I was alone on deck with the sun, the river and my book. It was very pleasant.

By midday, even this deck lizard was too hot and very tired from my early awakening so I went to my bed and snoozed till 3pm.
Going back onto the deck, I met the only other Westerner on our boat. Helmed was from Germany, 56 years old (ish) and here on holiday. He loved Asia, had been to China a few times, was here on his own and didn’t have any plans as to where he was going. He told me lots about Burma and its temples. He even knew the dimensions of places, distances between villages and how high all the different Buddha statues were. Turns out he was a Buddhist. (Although I would counter this claim as in the days that followed and the whiskey on his breath at 9am didn’t seem very Buddhist-esque to me). He was a nice man, we chatted about many things and later that night he gave me his special recipe for German potato salad, which did include pickled cucumber but didn’t include mayonnaise. What IS this world coming to??

That evening the boat stopped again, this time for a night time visit to a temple. I got off the boat and found myself accompanied by the enthusiastic Mr Jang, who told me that this temple was in honour of a man who was a great warrior who had led many wars and was an excellent fighter. “So, coming here will make me really good at Kung Fu?” I asked. “Yes”. I tried to ask how a warrior can qualify for a temple, as I thought that most (all) temples in China were Buddhist or Taoist and therefore more of a spiritual offering rather than in honour of anyone in particular (except Buddha) and certainly weren’t handed out to someone who essentially was just really good at killing people. I don't think he understood my question...

Never mind. We traipsed through, caught up with the students I had met earlier and we all walked through the hawkers and stalls together. We got back to the boat, and I went to bed. There’s not much to do on these Chinese boats if you’re not into playing cards and spitting sunflower seed shells.

The second morning we woke up, after the piped music, 5.30am, on the nose, to a thunderstorm, and the rain started and didn’t actually stop for the whole day. The scenery had changed and we were now in the gorge. After yesterdays reasonably flat landscape with the odd terrace and plantation, we were now in definite gorge territory and I was reminded of the scenery of TLG. The weather was foul, and it was cold so it was very disappointing. Really China, you could do better for my last week.

We sailed on until about midday, and then we got sent off down some smaller gorges on a smaller boat. This took about an hour and a half to get to our next destination, whereupon we were put onto bamboo boats with a man in a wolf hair hat and jacket. We all clambered aboard, (about 20 of us) I had Helmed with me so it was nice to have someone to talk to. We were taken down a very small gorge and past some waterfalls while the man in the hat spoke very animatedly in Chinese and sang songs. It was all very good natured, the Chinese on the boat took turns having their pictures taken wearing his hat. I was entertaining myself by taking photos of them, and apart from the cold and the wet it was very enjoyable.

There are 2 points to note here. The first is that the river has now risen 150meters and is predicted to rise a further 20. This is supposedly as high as it will go. I couldn’t help but think of TLG in its majestic height, and although the Yangtze is pretty, I have been spoiled. I couldn’t help but think how awesome it would have been before they flooded it, and how TLG would look if IT was flooded 150m. Not as impressive is the answer.

The second point of note is a realisation of universal human behaviour. People on boats wave. We don’t do it anywhere else. We don’t pass other cars on the motorway and offer a friendly wave. On trains, unless saying goodbye to someone, one doesn’t wave at another train going past. And yet on a boat, there are always at least three people who cannot go past another boat without waving. I’m not sure what causes this phenomenon, but I find it intriguing and amusing.

Back on the boat to take us back to our original boat, I settled myself for a little nap time for the 2 hours it would take us to get back. But no. China is never silent. Or even a bit quiet. We had the tour lady to begin with talking, at the volume favoured in China which is not quite loud enough to actually HURT your ears, but certainly not quiet enough to be able to ignore. When she finally put her microphone down, Helmed and I exchanged appreciative glances and then...she was back. This time showing us a book about the river that we could buy. Page by page, she showed us the pictures and telling us, presumably, about how great it was. Then she put the microphone down again. Phew. And then picked it back up again. And started singing. And then when she had finished, a man got up and gave us a song. And then the tour lady was back again, talking. By this point, I was tired, my head ached. I wanted quiet. I wanted peace. And still the loud Chinese talking, never stopping, went on and on and on and on....by the end, Helmed and I were almost hysterical. We were both near breaking point. Laughing inanely when the microphone was picked up again...and again... there was no escaping. This was aural hell like I have never experienced since I left home and my stepfathers country and western singing *...

We finally made it back on board our big boat. I showered to get warm, ate my instant noodles and went to bed.
Day three. 5.30am. You guessed it. I ignored it all. I ignored the music, ignored the noise in my room and managed to sleep until 7.30am.

At 10am we were going to leave our boat and travel by bus to the big dam.

What a difference a day makes. The weather was warm and sunny, blue skies with big white fluffy clouds that are so rarely seen here.
We drove to the dam and went on the tour around. Well, they took us to 3 vantage points to take pictures. We weren’t allowed in or on it, which was a shame. But never mind.

The dam is massive. Obviously, it’s blocking the world’s third largest river. There are a few cracks that China says is perfectly natural. No last year’s earthquake didn’t affect it. It’s perfectly safe. But the fact of the matter is that there is an extraordinary amount of water piling up there and if that dam breaks, the 1 million people who live in Yichang will all be dead in an hour.

Sobering stuff.

The Yangtze is just another example of how sad China makes me and at the same time, highlights how extraordinary is Chinas ambition. I am sad that the river is not how it was and my mum never got to see it.
I am sad that one and a half million people were displaced for this to happen.
I am sad that thousands of cultural artefacts are forever lost.
I am sad that the Yangtze dolphins are dying in a river that is effectively becoming the world’s largest toilet.
I am sad that if only China switched off some of its neon at night there may have been no need for this at all in the first place.
I am sad that a similar fate awaits TLG, but pleased I saw it before it too became a casualty of Chinas ambitious domination of the natural environment.
But when I think of the Yangtze, that great swollen brown sluggish river that travels so far through this immense country, I think of the extraordinary number of brightly coloured plastic shoes that you see floating in it, and wonder where all those feet got carried to.


*Only joking Arthur, you have the voice of an angel, nay, a choir of angels.

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