Gorges and Be Dammed

Monday 21 August

We were up early again this morning – about 05.45 – and dressed in time to see the first of the three large gorges we would pass through today. The weather was distinctly cooler – comfortable in the mid 20’s – still with a strong warm wind and extremely hazy. I don’t think the inhabitants here ever have a clear day and see the sun.

The Yangtze was about five or six rivers millions of years ago. Originally, the area of Chongqing was a watershed and rivers flowed both westwards (towards what is now Tibet) and eastwards to the China Sea. As a result of two dramatic movements of the land, one over 100 million years ago and the second about 72 million years ago (give or take a few years) - which resulted in the creation of the Himalayas and the Gobi Desert - the Three Gorges were formed – unusually no glaciers were involved here. The rivers that originally flowed westwards changed direction to flow towards the lower eastern lands and eventually the largest rivers linked up with the main river flowing east.

Only the final part of the river, around the delta, was called the Jian Zi (other parts were called such names as the Sun river or the Golden river) and supposedly in the 18th century, when some English missionaries asked the name of the river near Shanghai, they were told it was the Jian Zi. These missionaries reported back to the Church and authorities in England that there was a very large river in China called the “Yangtze”. So the whole river has become known by this name outside of China – though some of the rural areas still refer to the old names.

There were hundreds of abandoned dwellings along the water’s edge of the Gorge and small areas of crops that had been lovingly tended, to provide food. We could see vegetables, wheat, sweet corn and fruit trees - in some cases, the men were still tending their crops, despite the fact that they will soon be under water. Everything within twenty metres of the waterline will be submerged in about six weeks time.

The water is much greener today – less silt travels through the twists and turns of the river – but we saw no birds or signs of wild life at all in this first Gorge. One of the operations staff gave a running commentary about the Gorge and things to look out for – such as navigation aids, tributaries joining the river that provided important landmarks, and tall peaks. Most of the upper slopes are forested with bushes and small trees in between the limestone outcrops, and the whole environment is dark green and eerie in the mist.

We passed out of the Gorge just as breakfast was being served! The boat chugged on and about an hour later we docked at a tributary – River Daning - and transferred to a smaller vessel which took us to see further gorges in this region. To enter this new gorge we passed under a concrete arched bridge some twenty metres (60+ feet) above us where the traffic was trundling across. It is amazing to think that when the second phase of the Three Gorges Dam project is complete at the end of September, this arch will be at water level. We chugged downstream, round the precipitous mountains watching for markers showing the 156 metre and the 175 metre boundaries, which indicate the levels of water for October 2006 and early 2009 respectively. We did see a couple of monkeys in one spot along the river bank.

Where the gorges end there are new settlements built precariously on the hillsides (not quite so steep as the mountains in the gorges) to house all the displaced people – this amounts to millions along the stretch from Chongqing to Sandouping where the dam is being constructed. These buildings themselves will be only a few metres above the 175 metre line – you can imagine adverts for riverside apartments in the future – only they won’t be like Docklands, more like the slums of the East End – at least from the outside.

After about an hour and a half, we arrived in the area of the Three Mini Gorges and we changed boats again, this time to sampans – each holding about twenty people. They are rickety wooden boats – many people donned their life jackets - with not very comfortable, narrow seats and plaited roofs to keep the heat out – not necessary today. We sped up the first of the small gorges where we did actually see a couple of birds (not sure what variety) – this took about 20 minutes – until we reached the end of the first mini gorge and could travel no further due to the low level of the water – when the water rises in October, you will be able to travel to all three mini gorges. We then turned round and went all the way back again, and re-embarked on the larger boat, which took us back again to our cruise boat (lots of getting on and off boats) in time for lunch.

During the afternoon we went to a lecture by the Cruise Director about the pros and cons of the Dam Project. Everyone here supports the Dam Project – it has bought jobs and wealth to the area and one turbine will produce enough electricity for a city of 1 million people per day! – and there will be 26 turbines in all when the project is complete (14 operating at present). Most of China will have some dependency on this project and should it fail (or be destroyed by terrorists - the effect would be worse than the Tsunami – more than half of China would disappear under the flooding as most of the principle cities of China are situated on this river! The deeper water in the river will allow larger boats and cruisers to go as far a Chongqing thus increasing the trade and tourism in this area. The cons are that it will affect the weather patterns over the whole of China and beyond, millions of people have been displaced and age-old communities lost, and the project has affected world prices in steel, copper and concrete. The resulting lake at the dam will be larger than Austria!

By now we were passing through the final Gorge, but the weather was so misty that we could not see very much at all. We reached the dam and the 5 Locks to transfer us from 136 metres to sea level about 18.30. The locks are absolutely huge structures (can’t imagine how much concrete has been used here) – huge concrete structures rise over 175 metres high. The “boxes” are wide enough to take two of our cruise ships or medium container ships, and five boats lengthwise – 10 boats in all – and they were queueing up! Each of the five locks drops about 20 metres – over 60 feet – but we only needed to use 4 locks as the water is only at 136 metres at present – 175 metres in 2009 will require all five locks to be used. The whole process took four hours – we had the Captain’s Farewell dinner and the staff put on a cabaret show on Chinese music and dancing before we finished passing through. Two of our group also took part in the cabaret – Shreya aged 9 did some riverdancing (though they didn’t have the music) and Lucinda (Trinidad Mum) sang the Titanic song – she has a really beautiful voice.

We have another early start tomorrow to see the Dam itself – breakfast is at 06.30 – and then it’s off to the airport to fly to Shanghai.

NEXT DAY

Will write today’s blog later, but currently in the airport at Wuhan and can get connected again at last! Hurray!!!!
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