Its a Long Way To . . . . . Shanghai

Tuesday 22 August

Another early morning as we prepared to disembark for the final time. Breakfast was at 06.30 when cases had to be outside cabins, ready for collection – its always a bit of a panic trying to get everything back in the case.

I forgot to mention the last couple of days that every time you leave the boat, the staff line the gangplanks and walkways and each one wishes you a happy journey. This was the case again today, and the Operations Director also met us in the Lobby to wave goodbye. Most of the other passengers were not leaving until after lunch.

As soon as the luggage was loaded on the coach, we drove to the dam, crossing yet another spectacular suspension bridge. They really are the champions at building bridges.

Something else I forgot to mention about the Gorge area, was that there were several new bridges under construction across the river – the bridge at the entry to the Daning River, which will have to be dismantled soon, as the water will come up to the arch span, is being rebuilt a couple of miles downstream. At present it is a large scar reaching hundreds of feet up the mountains on each side of the river, with tubes leading down to connect with tanker style boats that take away the rock and debris. Halfway up one side there was a large café umbrella (more than100 feet up) – presumably the office of the Site Manager. We could not see any roads – or even goat tracks -connecting with this area – maybe they still have to be constructed too, over the top of the mountains.

There is a lot of coal mining along the Gorges, We saw blue trucks (all trucks seemed to be blue) disgorging their loads into almost vertical holding “pits” halfway up the mountain sides – usually about three or four pits together. When boats arrive to carry the coal away, a small JCB and a team of men would move the coal towards the tube through which it would travel down to river level. Very primitive, but quite effective.

But back to today:

We arrived at the Dam Visitor Centre where there was a small scale model of the layout of the dam – the project is so large, a crowd of about 200 people could circle round the outside This definitely helped to understand the layout – the position of the locks and the area to be flooded for the lake, in relation to the dam itself. There were coaches arriving all the time, so it was just a quick five minute look before climbing up to the viewing point. This would have been great on a clear day, but with the mist/pollution thicker than ever, we could hardly see the dam, or the bridge we had just crossed, from this point.

It was then off to “see” the dam itself. We crossed another huge bridge during our descent to the water level - this one was specially constructed to take the enormous weight of the building materials when they were being transported to the site. As the road wound its way down, we passed another area still under construction. This is going to be the “Ship Lift” – a device that will carry medium sized ships from the top level to the bottom of the dam in just 40 minutes – instead of the usual 4-5 hours. It will not be ready until 2011, but it will look like a concrete elevator! At the base of the dam it was still extremely foggy and difficult to see to the far side of the dam where they are still constructing an area containing twelve turbines. But the dam is an extremely tall concrete structure (200 metres), with turbine areas for the hydro-electric power on each side of a giant spillway. The water closest to us was a series of whirlpools where fourteen turbines are already in operation.

Why did they build the dam here?
Because there was already an island in the centre of the river which slowed the speed of the water. During the construction the top of the island has been demolished!
Because there was lots of granite in the area, required for making strong concrete apparently? - all the concrete has come from China itself – I cannot imagine how many billion tones it has taken.
Because there was plenty of room for the lake – just one town to be displaced at this point. They have built hundreds of new houses for the workers here which will be underwater when the project is finished.

The cost of the project is about $US280 billion!!!!! That’s quite a lot of pocket money! There’s been lots of foreign investment of course, but also the Chinese Government put an extra 1 yuan on the cost each therm of electricity, so that the whole country made a contribution.

When we had all feasted our eyes on the dam sufficiently, we were back in the coach for the long haul to Wuhan Airport – a drive of over 4 hours! There is an airport closer to Sandouping, but apparently the flights are “unstable” so it was felt it was better to travel on to Wuhan before taking to the skies once more.

Our first stop after about an hour, was at Yichang – a medium sized city – only about 800,000 people - there was a large square in the centre surrounded by grass, which said “Keep Off”! Either we are getting good at crossing roads or there was far less traffic here than we have been used to so far in China (I think this is probably the case) - anyway we strolled around for just 20 minutes, many munching ice creams from MacDonalds! and stretched our legs. We actually had to pay to go to the loo here – 0.30 yuan – about 2 ½ p! They were still “Chinese” style, but at least clean and provided soap. We then took to the roads once more.

This area is much more rural than we have seen so far. Large open fields of rice, potatoes, sweet corn and lotus (they look like really large leafed nasturtiums, about 2ft across, in clumps like rhubarb). Many of the farmhouses were actually two storey dwellings and looked quite smart, but as we drove past in the coach you could glimpse people inside, sitting on the floor in empty spaces – so perhaps they weren’t really any more sophisticated than the huts we have seen elsewhere. But most had satellite dishes outside the front door. Some houses also had large square ponds for front gardens - for fish (about 60 ft square – needs a boat to get to the feeder in the middle – a little bit bigger than the pond I am thinking of for our garden – in fact they are probably twice the size of our garden!). A few cattle were grazing on the grassy levees between the fields. All the workers we saw in the fields were the exact epitome of the pictures we have seen – conical straw hats, small brown wizened faces, bent over tending the crops – it was like a page out of my school geography book.

It took over four hours to reach the airport, and when we arrived we had three hours to wait for take off. So Colin and I settled into the Lounge area and tried to get connected to the internet – fingers crossed that it would work – we now had about six blog entries to post. It did, so we passed most of the time posting the blog entries and responding to emails. But at least we caught up. The plane then delayed was over half an hour which meant we didn’t arrive at Shanghai until 20.30. Coming in to land over Shanghai, the city looked like Fairyland, all coloured lights over a huge area – you could see the roads are built on a grand grid pattern. But as the plane was coming down we were getting closer and closer to the roofs of the houses – we could see no sign of the runway – and it really felt as if we would be landing in someone’s back garden! – as we passed over the last fence the wheels touched the ground and we were down – and in the airport. LIGHTNING

It was 21.15 by the time we had collected our luggage (all arrived safely thank goodness) and we were on yet another coach with another guide – Jasmine/Mo lee. It took over two hours to get to the hotel – along the A20! – were we really on our way to Souzhou or Sidcup? On our way into Shanghai on the plane and for most of the way on the coach, we were treated to a splendid lightning display – lighting up the whole landscape with streaks of white light for seconds at a time – but no thunder. Going by the large puddles and muddy car park, where cars wheels were spinning in the mud, there had been some heavy rain before we landed, but luckily for us it had stopped by the time we emerged from the airport.


Everyone was completely shattered and all they wanted was a bed. The hotel looks great – much better than the 5* in Xian – its called the Bamboo Grove and the bedrooms are built around a large pond with bamboo, white ducks and a tall fountain. There were 2 girls in short dresses, singing in the bar – it served to perk the men up for a few minutes. Its such a shame we have arrived so late – it has definitely been a coach journey too far today. As we missed dinner, the hotel provided us with picnic boxes – better than those we had at midday with hard boiled egg, roll, a slice each of spam and cheese, and banana and apple! Tonight we had smoked salmon salad, rolls and butter, a tuna club sandwich, banana and orange juice – a bit more up market.

Now its time for bed – to dream of gardens and silk markets for tomorrow.