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Published: September 28th 2006
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Hours until we land back in England. Boo Hoo
Congratulations
Hello first off congratulations to Mr and Mrs Gorman, who were featured way back in our Northern Territory Australian entry, who are having what appears to be a little honeymoon baby. The world could do with a few more Gorms! Secondly congratulations to Scooby dog with her puppies I expect carnage in The Hope and Anchor now!
Right, we've got serious blog lag and meant to do this weeks ago but got "stranded" on a deserted tropical beach, all of which will become apparent in the next installment.
Cruising Down the Yangtze River
Anyhooo, China - after some intense sightseeing of a plethora of dynastic sights of Beijing, Xian etc. we embarked on our 3-day cruise down the Yangtze river. After our less salubrious cruises on the Mekong and in Halong Bay, we were delighted to find we were on a big luxury boat with proper hotel-style rooms, few passengers, lots of crew doing nothing, massive Chinese banquets for breakfast, lunch and dinner, extortionate drink prices, embarrassing cabaret and surprisingly fun sober karaoke! Plus I'll always remember the drunken dancing Taiwanese dwarf (or was he a
midget?).
The scenery cruising through the 3 Gorges was really spectacular. We also had some average stop offs along the way, taking in Fengdu ghost city (a macabre temple a bit like purgatory) and a trip on a old traditional tracker boat where loads of fat tourists where rowed and pulled upstream by knarled naked old men (although they wore brief briefs for us tourists).
Really Very Interesting Gorge Project Facts
Along the way on the banks of the river we saw lots of brand new and pretty ugly new towns being built higher up to replace the deserted shambling old towns which were either planned or already submerged because of the monstrous and controversial 3 Gorges Dam Project.
The project has already raised the water level of the gorge some 30 meters to 127 meters and by 2009 to 176 ms. Its affected millions of people and workers re-homing as well as unknown environmental change (denied by the government obviously). Only on a non-elected Chinese government could such massive changes be done so easily. But I suppose it is admirable that they realize renewable power is so important to such a rapidly developing nation with 1.2 billion
Fendu Pagoda on Yangtze River
You may have become bored of Pagodas by the end. We were. people and not reliant on coal, nuclear or oil. We finished our cruise at the world's largest dam which will be the equivalent of 18 nuclear power stations, benefit 4-9%!o(MISSING)f China and cost over 142 billion quid (so about the same as the new Wembley!!) . What a whopper!
Modern Shanghai
Most of this new power looks like its going to feed cities like Shanghai, which is a amazingly new modern vibrant skyscraper city, with a few old colonial and chinese buildings left over from pre communist times. Its a impressive new world city and Becker took quite a liking to it.
Lijiang
So for us so far China was mostly a tour of big cities in central/easter China so we thought we would get a bit of green stuff and Shangri-La in Yunann Province near Tibet in SW China by flying to Lijiang. Lijiang is a lovely old town with mazy cobbled streets with functioning waterways running through it. Its pretty high at over 1800 m and was nice to get out of the humidity and fell a bit cold. We stayed at at a lovely new guesthouse (MCA) with great views of the city and
rubbish drains. I managed to block the toilet for 2 days and the fetid stench in the end was so bad we had to leave, how embarrassing for me! We had a very spicy dinner with the owners and met some of the local Naxi people, which was going great until they brought round the 12 year old Whiskey.
Black Dragon Pool&OAP Dance Off
The highlight in Lijiang was a day going round the serene Black Dragon Park Pool which contrasted the relative tourist bustle of Lijiang Old Town. Here we experience what can only be described as a OAP Dance Off between 2 different groups of Naxi ethnic groups. It was lush to see them all dancing to traditional music in the chinese equivalence to line dancing, with checkers playing old men looking on.
Really Very Interesting Population Thoughts
Chairman Mao's policy on creating a fit healthy society by encouraging daily physical exercise seems to have worked as these coffin dodgers were still well spritely! This may seem to be a good thing but combined with communist China's 2 conflicting early and late birth policies - first to have as many children as possible as more can
only make China stronger then the reactionary later 1 child per family policy (now in urban China many have 0 kids) - means there is seems to be a massive number of healthy fit retired older generation, comparatively fewer younger people and a fast dwindling birthrate. Hmm you do the math but maybe trouble ahead?
Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls - Tiger Leaping Gorge
Anyway where was I. Yes after a few days preparing in Lijiang we went off to trek for a few days in one of the deepest gorges in the world, which was 30km along and 3900m from water level to peaks of the mountains. The typically fanciful name, Tiger Leaping Gorge, was so impressive and really inspired my awe as it were. It was hard going up some steep sections, especially The 28 Bends. At one point Becky said she didn't think she'd make it cos here legs had turned to jelly but she soldiered on like a real trooper to make it. We stayed at a lush place high up in the gorge (Halfway House) with superb views. The trek along the winding high pass was great to crane your neck to see the peaks
Our Yangtze Boat
It's a big ugly old boy and typical horrid looking city on the banks in distance and to get vertigo peering at the gorge water miles below. Also had to walk through a few small waterfalls but as TLC advised we didn't go chasing any but just stuck to the rivers and the lakes that we're used to!!
Another Gorge Bites the Dust
Yep not content with the 3 Gorges Project it is proposed that 8 new dams will be constructed around the area which will flood the surround area and raise the water level significantly. Although I suppose the TLG's got a few thousand meters to spare but wont be nearly so impressive then.
Dali
From TLG we went south by winding pubic bus where even the locals were travel sick to Dali to rest of weary bones. Dali like Lijiang is a well preserved cobbled town with many locals in ethnic dress, this time of the Bai. Some of who were flag waving guides again showing mainly chinese tourists the obvious sights through blaring mic/speaker sets. Now you may have noticed this theme running though both our China entries but it just seemed rather intrusive into our enjoyment of many of these lovely old places. I presume this is quite a recent
Tracker Boat Captain
Nice scrunts must be BHS explosion (cousin Ben supports this theory with his visit in 2000) because of Chinas burgeoning economy and the populations new found wealth and mobility. Also being such a populous nation it stands to reason there should be so many tourists and they have every right to visit it how ever they see fit but unfortunately as independent western travelers we thought much of the charm was spolit somewhat. I bit like Skegness I suppose! We hoped we would see China before it changed too much but I think we were a little late getting here. It was still a wicked experience and we've seen amazing stuff but maybe we needed to get more 'off the beaten track' to see the 'real' China.
With these things in mind, 3 debilitating rainy days in Dali and an email from our friends Lucy&Mart detailing their plan of island hopping around Indonesia we made the tough decision to miss out the apparently gorgeous but touristy Guilin/Yangshou in favor of going direct to Hong Kong for a few days then a extra week on the beaches before touching back down in Autumnal UK. It proved to be an inspired decision - all of which
Oh dam
sharing the dam on 3 Gorges Project with other big boats you can hear about in our final destination travelblog.
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Lucy
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Looking forward to seeing you!
It has taken me nearly a year to get into the idea of writing something on this blog! Just wanted to say will be great to have you back! Not so great for you initially perhaps but England isn't that bad - well actually it is, BUT the weather looks similar to China so at least there won't be much of an adjustment there. See you soooooooon! xx