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Rising water in the Yangtze's Boat Locks
Dancers on the Yangtze River After another 14 hour sojourn across the Chinese countryside, we pulled into the city of Yichang, on the Yangtze river. We dropped most of our stuff off at a hotel, as we'd be hopping around the river for the next few days with different accomodations each night.
Following a great lunch which we were told would likely be our last "solid" meal until we returned from the Yangtze, we headed out to the site of the Three Gorges Dam which many of us were excited to see. The dam is actually part of a huge complex that spreads out across the horizon. It's hard to really take in the enormity of the site, and how much work and material has been put into building what (if I recall correctly), will be the largest dam in the world. When it will be complete, it will feature a boat elevator for smaller ships, a system of 5 shiplocks for large boats, and will have enough capacity to power approximately 9%!o(MISSING)f the country. That's a lot of electricity.
Leaving the dam, we made it to a dock where we boarded our "cruise ship" which would be our home for a
night. I don't know how I didn't at first notice the overpowering smell of mildew in the room, but this was for sure not what I envisioned with the words "cruise ship". Aside from a doppelganger tour group, we were the only non-Chinese on the boat. We were warned against eating the food from the ship diner, and subsisted on ramen noodles and beer for the rest of the day. Still, the boat provided some excellent views of the shores of the Yangtze, and its overdevelopment. It's the third longest river in the world, and ultra-polluted, but that didn't seem to stop people on the banks from fishing and swimming - uggh! Most exciting was going up shiplocks through the Yangtze. It's amazing how fast a boat can rise if you pour in enough water. Unfortunately, I don't think the video I posted does it justice.
We were woken up at 5AM by a Chinese lady yelling through a megaphone to get up. We boarded a smaller boat which took us through several gorgeous mist-covered gorges, ending at the fishing town of an ethnic minority whose name I can't remember. We were taken on a small fishing longboat rowed
by the village men, who would jump out and pull the boat with ropes from land on the shallow parts. A village girl who was our local guide explained to us that the town had been dirt poor until it had been turned into a tourist locale in 1991 by the government, but the men in the winter still "drink strong wine on mountain, then jump into river naked to pull boats". On that topic, there were pictures of naked men pulling the boats all over the place, but luckily, it appears that that is also a tradition which ended in 1991 (see the backdrop of the dancers video if you're interested). We enjoyed a dance show put on by the locals and went back to the boat to feast on more ramen noodles.
We got off the boat at the town of Fenjie, which was a brand new town built as a relocation area for the people who had to be moved as the dam was going to bring water over their villages, and took in what would be considered a typical Chinese town, spending a night at what our guide affectionately called "the hard-bed hotel". The next
morning, after climbing down 300 steps to board a hydrofoil which took us back to Yichang, we were once again jumping on an overnight train towards our next destination.
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Richie
non-member comment
Great blog
great write-up and photos Alex - not so sure about the bleary eyed one of me with a beer in my hand! Look forward to reading the next one - enjoy Bulgaria!!