Shibaozhi pagoda, Wushan, Three Gorges Dam, Jingzhou (Viking School)

Day 6 -- March 22
Shibaozhi

After spending the morning cruising (Sondra passed up the Chinese language lesson -- Carolyn chose to add to her skills) we landed at Shibaozhai in the afternoon for a walk through the town to a beautiful red pagoda nestled into the sheer cliff of an island in the Yangtze. The town is an entirely new (10 years old) relocation city. No part of it existed prior to then -- now a million and a half people live in vertical splendor compared to their former life. However, there is no industry to support the population and it is completely dependent on tourism. Our young female guides and the plethora of street vendors seem to be the only people at work in the town. Some residents were playing cards or mah jongg in their garages open to the street, while other garages had been turned into shops. But even the shops moved into the street to better accost the tourists as they walked by on their way to the pagoda. The island was reached by a swaying pedestrian suspension bridge which landed us on the island about 30 steps above the entrance to the pagoda. For those who climbed the pagoda (Carolyn did; Sondra did not) it was then 99 or so steps up the 9 stories of the pagoda. The wimpy tourists walked around the outside of the pagoda and then back through the town as it rained. Many of the shopkeepers closed up in the rain while most of the remainder hawked umbrellas or coolie hats in addition to their usual wares. S and C both picked up some goods -- C proved to be by far the better bargainer.

Each day is closed with a briefing on the next day’s activities, dinner, and some kind of evening entertainment. The boat stays tied to the pontoon platform for the remainder of the night and sets sail early in the morning -- the river is considered too dangerous to navigate at night.

Day 7 -- March 23
Wushan

We sailed through our first of the gorges at 7:30 this morning. This is the Qutang Gorge, and is the smallest of the gorges. The water has turned a beautiful blue green and is now much more appealing than the yellow-brown we started out on. There is still loads of commercial traffic on the river: open barges of dirt, gravel, coal, sand, bricks, and who knows what else, plus barges with containers, covered cargo, ships loaded with automobiles, ferries with trucks side-by-side and end-to-end. Water taxis ply the channel as well. There are also passenger ships which sometimes raft right against Century Emerald (our boat) when we are docked at a pontoon. At Wuhan we left our big boat and climbed onto a couple of tour boats to better tour the gorges. These were just too cute with bright green and yellow pagoda-shaped structures on the shallow-draft hulls. In these gaudy vessels we toured the next two gorges. The river is at 161-164 meters; full pond is 175 meters. The river and its lake are going down as they prepare capacity for the monsoon months, May and June. The gorges are spectacular: vertical faces often 800 meters high for several miles. We saw Rhesus monkeys and white mountain goats, but not many of either. And we have seen precious few birds outside of Beijing and Xi’an and Chongqing. The mountains are craggy, pointy, and rocky -- inhospitable to say the least.

The new relocation towns all look almost deserted. There are many apartment buildings in each town under construction -- and each building has several identical siblings. One of the reasons the towns look like ghost towns is that the government gives relocating families a new apartment according to the size of the family, but the apartments are cavelike. Families can add windows as part of their individual upgrading, but until they do the apartments are open to the elements. Power is scarce despite the dam, and so few lights are on in the apartments. Very few people are on the streets save the shopkeepers, and out here in the countryside there are few opportunities for employment outside of the tourist trades, guiding and merchandise hawking. The countryside is outrageously mountainous with slopes from 60 to 90 degrees, and farmers grow their crops on narrow terraces. It looks pretty scary. Every town, built on one of these hillsides, has hundreds of steps from the water up to the town and then a family’s apartment may well be a 7^th floor walk-up. Higher buildings have elevators, but they are more expensive and there are fewer of them. These terraced farms which cling to the mountainsides also have a considerable walk to a set of stairs down to the water. Some towns are now being connected by highways, but many of these farms have no access other than by water -- and few seem to have their own boats. We’re pretty sure the homes are unheated (the new apartments have indoor plumbing -- but we doubt that they have hot water) and we question the quality of construction, as they appear to be much older than their years.

Back on board our vessel we had another big lunch -- this time our lunch companions were two couples from Israel and one from Canada -- though most of the travelers are from the US with a smattering from Australia, New Zealand and Canada so far. They are mostly white, with a couple of black women, a few ethnic Chinese and an ethnic Japanese couple (from Indianapolis, out of Honolulu.)
Tonight we’ll start our journey through the ship locks -- we’ll likely stay up only for the first lock (I think there are four.)

Day 8 -- March 23
Wushan to Three Gorges Ship Locks

Here we transferred to two tour boats -- too cute yellow and green pagodas on steel hulls. We don’t really look like American tourists, do we? Whatever. We toured the Lesser Gorges with more vertical walls of granite and impossible narrowly terraced mini-gardens. The rape is just coming into bloom, so there are swaths of bright yellow painted across the mountains.

After dinner we started through the giant locks of the Three Gorges Dam -- the world’s largest turbine hydroelectric dam. Going through each lock we descend 20 meters in about an hour total elapsed time. The w l y. It’s all so well automated that it’s almost boring -- no need to watch all five locks!


Day 9 -- March 24
Three Gorges Dam

BIG. Everything in China is the biggest, the oldest, the first, the newest -- but this one really is the biggest. Once again, no people in sight other than shopkeepers, hawkers, tourists, guides, security guards. For all that we see there is no person present in the operation of the dam. It’s 2000 meters long, with 26 turbines, each generating 700 MW of electricity -- none of which goes to the locals, it is all shipped off to the big cities. 6 more turbines will be installed when they are built, The country desperately needs power to serve all the people -- population control will stem the growth but they are still way behind developed countries.
After touring the dam we piled back on board and plied further down the Yangtze. The scenery has changed dramatically, from serious mountains to flat farmland and evidence of light manufacturing. Cities are no longer 100% relocation cities, so the old construction is a lot of one and two story buildings. Some are even painted!

Day 10 -- March 25
Jingzhou

Our excursion today is to the primary (our elementary) school sponsored by Viking Cruises. 800 students in pre-school through 6^th grade. They entertained us with musical productions -- cute kids with all the moves from MTV -- and later in their classroom with rote recitations. With 50 kids to a classroom with one teacher they could hardly do more. We were encouraged to bring gifts of candy or snacks -- Carolyn obliged but Sondra, the curmudgeon, opted to make a donation to the school instead.

Back on the bus to the boat we stopped to take pictures of water buffalo lounging in a field. They only work for a couple of weeks during the year when the fields are plowed. The Chinese envy their lifestyle, and it’s no wonder.

rape (canola)