Three Gorges

---

We had a long weekend at the beginning of May for Labor Day. We decided to go on another “family vacation” to get out of Wuhan and see another part of China. The final verdict was to go check out the Three Gorges Dam. For those of you unfamiliar with the Three Gorges project, I’ll give a brief introduction. The dam itself is one of China’s most expansive (and expensive) undertakings. Located in YiChang, along the Yangtze River, the dam is set to become the world’s largest hydro-electric power station. Construction began in December of 1994 and it is not expected to be fully operational until 2011. While there are many benefits to the dam, such as flood control and clean power, it has also been a controversial project because the flooding of the reservoir has already displaced approximately 1.4 million people and submerged many cultural relics. The water won’t reach its maximum level of 175m until the end of 2008.

So, there is your background information. Back to our trip. We booked a tour with the help of our Chinese friend, Maggie, and her friend (who just happens to be a tourist agent). In China, it is difficult to plan anything on your own. For any kind of trip to a scenic spot or tourist attraction, you really need to go through an agent. We settled on a 3 day/2 night trip. We would take a bus due east to YiChang where we would board a boat. The boat would take us through the locks of the dam and into the gorges. In addition to the seven of us from Augustana, our group also included five other friends who teach at an elementary school in Wuhan. On May 1st , we all congregated on our campus to hop on the bus to begin our tour. We had an incredibly vague itinerary, but for the most part we had no idea what was going to happen over the next few days. We were lucky enough to get a private mini-bus to take us all the way to YiChang. The short 4 hour bus ride ended up being closer to 6 hours, so I spent most of May Day sitting/sleeping en route to the boat. We boarded the ship of dreams around 7pm and we took off immediately. We didn’t really know what to expect, so I was pleasantly surprised when we had nice, 4 person rooms on the third floor complete with their own bathroom/shower (a tiny closet with a showerhead directly over the squatter). The twelve of us were divided between 4 rooms: Sarah, Sara, Kate and Liz were in one, Laura, Alexes, Dan and I were in anther, Alex and Matt were with two random Chinese men, and Nick and Katie were with two random Chinese women. The two women started to raise a fuss about the situation and we realized that she didn’t want a man in her room. Fine. Totally understandable. I agreed to switch with Nick, so it was now Katie and I with the women. One of the women kept talking about how she wanted to switch more. Finally we realized that she was trying to get one of our guys to go with their room full of men so that one of their women could be with her. It was utterly nonsensical and frustrating because she was trying to get us to split our group up so that her group could have a different arraignment. We didn’t want to be separated anymore than we already were, so we told her no and went off in search of food.

Again, we didn’t really know what to expect as far as the food situation was concerned. We knew that food was not included in the cost of our trip, but that there would be some available on the boat. We made sure to pack a GIANT bag of snacks (chips, crackers, peanut butter sandwiches) just to be safe. For dinner, we went to the restaurant on the second floor. I think we were eating later than most people because they weren’t exactly pleased to see us. There weren’t many options for dishes and they weren’t that great when we finally got them. By this time, it was dark out and we were starting to pass through the locks. Even though we couldn’t see much, it was pretty neat. Looking out the window next to our table, we could see the wall slipping down as we rose up. The evening was quite warm and the air was hot and still as we worked our way through the series of locks. In addition to the air being stagnant, it was also noxious from fleet of boats all packed together in the lock spewing black smoke out of their smoke stacks. It was tolerable at first, but after a few hours it was really bothersome.

After dinner, we went back up to the third floor and sat in the lounge area at the back of the boat. There were tables and chairs so we could talk and just hang out as we worked our way to the reservoir. Soon a woman came in and told us that we had to buy special passes to be able to sit in that room or be able to go up on the top deck. I wasn’t in the mood to pay extra money to be able to sit somewhere, so I headed back to our room feeling a lot like the third class travelers on the Titanic. I was tired anyway, so I decided to crawl into bed and read for a little while. Katie and I were keeping our bags in the room with our friends since we didn’t feel that comfortable leaving our things with strangers. I changed into my pajamas and went next door to crawl into bed. When I got there, I found that the complaining lady had pulled the ol’ switcheroo. She had changed rooms and Katie and I were left with two Chinese men. I didn’t care at all. It was harmless (just like riding on the train), but it ticked me off that she raised such a stink and then stuck us with the men that she knew and we didn’t. Oy. They were very friendly and tried to strike up a conversation, but my Chinese is not quite at a conversational level yet. I smiled buried my head in my book until I fell asleep.

We had heard that we were getting off the boat around 7am, so I knew that we would have to be up early. When the speaker started blaring announcements and music at 5:30, I reluctantly got up and hopped in the showersquatter. The cold water was a shock, but it definitely helped wake me up. Katie and I were both ready to go, so we headed next door to check on everyone else. They were all still sleeping. I have no idea how they managed to stay in dreamland when there was essentially a Chinese woman screaming at them every five minutes. We sat out in the lounge as the others slowly started to come around and shuffle sleepily out of their rooms. There was some confusion over whether or not we would be changing boats that day. The night before, our guide had said that we would not be switching. In the morning, however, she said that we would be switching, so we packed everything up and were ready to make the change. It turns out that it was all a misunderstanding. We would be going on a different boat for the day to go through the gorges before returning to our original boat for the night. Around 7am, we found out that we weren’t even getting off the boat until 9am, so we all crawled back into bed for a catnap.

Shortly after 9am, we headed off of our boat toward shore. We were docked up against another boat, so we had to walk through 3 other boats until we actually got to land. We were walking through the crew’s quarters and they had their laundry hanging out to dry (complete with the ubiquitous underwear). Chinese people do not have the same sense of lines/personal space/logical turn-taking that most westerners have, so you feel like a herd of very pushy cattle. We finally made it ashore and followed the crowds toward another set of smaller boats. There were some small food stands with fruit and noodles and such, but none of us really took advantage of them, as we assumed that we would be stopping somewhere for lunch. That was our first mistake. After boarding Boat-The Second, I headed up to the second floor open-air deck. It was a cloudy and smoggy day, but it was pleasantly cool. I was so glad that it wasn’t hot and humid like it had been for the previous few days. The trip through the gorges was really amazing. The natural beauty of the rocky cliff faces was stunning. As we cruised along, I couldn’t help thinking of all of the people who had lived here for generations that were suddenly told that they had to leave. Or, I wondered what treasures were now submerged deep in the water that took us between the cliffs.

After cruising through the Lesser Three Gorges, we got onto even smaller boats. These only sat about two dozen people. We had a very energetic and enthusiastic guide who was emphatically describing…something. I wish I had been able to understand him. It was a nice change to be so close to the water, rather than being up a few levels on the bigger boats. We returned to Boat-The Second, and we were all pretty hungry. It didn’t look like we were going to be stopping any time soon, so most of us caved in and got a cup of ramen noodles. Chinese people eat these ALL THE TIME when they travel. You cannot get on a train or boat (or bus even) without seeing/smelling the buckets of ramen. It is amazing how this is such a universal phenomenon. Imagine getting on a plane or bus in the States and EVERYONE gets out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That just doesn’t happen.

We made it back to our original Ship of Dreams in the early afternoon. We lazed around reading, playing mahjong and napping until we got off again in the early evening. This time, we were headed to a temple. The temple itself was kind of underwhelming. We have seen so many beautiful temples that this one was not that impressive. There were some beautiful tablets with Chinese script carved into them. Ever since I took the Chinese Literati class, I have a great appreciation for calligraphy and beautiful characters. It is hard enough to capture the elegance and energy of each stroke when you are using a brush, so I can’t imagine how hard it is to achieve that same effect while chiseling out of stone.

We had an hour and a half after the temple in which to grab some dinner. We asked a girl at a shop if there were any good restaurants nearby and she not only recommended a place, but she walked us there and helped us order. When we returned to the boat, we were full and happy. We decided to head up to the top deck for the night. After a while, we decided to play Human iPod and provide our own music for the night. We each thought of a few songs, and we started to sing. After we finished the first song, all of the rest of the people on the top deck started clapping and then they started singing some Chinese songs. Then, we went again. They followed up with yet another. We spent at least an hour or two in an impromptu sing-off between our group and all of the Chinese people on the boat. The crew members were getting each other from different parts of the ship to come up and join in the fun. We sang everything from the Beach Boys to the Beatles to the theme song from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Tenacious D to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. It was amazing.

Friday morning began with the same shouting speaker waking us up at 5:30am. We got a knock on the door and it was our guide. Laura asked her what the plan was for the day and she said, “Sleep and then get on the bus.” We were going to be on the boat until 6pm when we transferred to the bus. I crawled under my pillow to ignore the blaring sound and slept for a few more hours. I was in no hurry to sit around and wait. When I finally got up, we went to the lounge and played mahjong and cards for a few hours. We ate some more ramen. In the early afternoon, it started raining. Then, it started to HAIL! I couldn’t believe it. The hail was big, too. I would say it ranged from peanut sized to grape sized. We were all starting to get a bit stir crazy by the time we started to head back through the locks. It was much better going through them in the daylight. We could actually see the gates opening and closing around us. The fumes were just as bad, but it wasn’t as hot. Finally, around 6pm, we left the boat and headed for the bus. It was good to be on the water and see the gorges, but we spent sooooo much time just sitting on the boat in transit. We were only on there for 2 days and I was already starting to get cabin fever. We traded one confined space for another as we rolled along on the bus. Around 11 or so, we finally made it back into Wuhan. There had clearly been some intense storms here, as well, because streets were flooded and there were trees down everywhere. Out poor taxi driver had to drive far out of his way to find a path that would get us home. We were all hungry, so even though it was about midnight, we went straight to our favorite place for noodles and had a late dinner. When we finally got home, I took one of the most refreshing showers of my life. It felt so good to wash away all of the boat grunge and smog film.

---

Photos

Family Photo
Dan, Alexes, Katie, Me, Nick, Sarah and Laura

Good day sunshine!
The good part about being forced to get up early is that you get a great picture of the sunrise.

Good day sunchine!
Sunrise!

Three Georges
The famous scenic spot

Sheeple
QUICK! SHOVE! YOU'LL NEVER MAKE IT OFF IF YOU DON'T GET OFF RIGHT NOW!!!

Alex's Breakfast
He helped himself to a roasted baby chick...

Boat the Second
This was the boat that took us through the gorges. It wasn't foggy. It was smoggy.

Boat the Second
Here is the top of our boat with the city in the background.

The Ship of Dreams
There is a view of our home away from home.

Our Roomies and our Ride
Those are the people we roomed with and that is our boat in the background

Nice Hat
She was clearly protecting herself from all of the harmful UV rays.

Bridge
Brisge construction fascinates me. How do they do that?

Gorgeous Gorges
I wish it was less hazy so that you could really see the depth of the landscape

Our Guide
He had a grea hat