The three little gorges
Trip Start
Jan 24, 2004
1
26
31
Trip End
Apr 01, 2004
Wushan,
Chongqing,
China
Sunday, March 21, 2004
With the waterbed episode still fresh in the mind we are up about 5am to transfer to smaller boats which will convey us up the three little gorges. I eat a breakfast of bread that is smeared thickly with sweet Russian jam. Thanks to that wonderful old lady Nadia back in Irkutsk. The little gorges contain steep walls of deep forest. Concealing a large community of gibbering monkeys. The main tributary that feeds into the Yangtze snakes through small settlements of people native to the area. These will soon be lost under a reservoir as water backs up behind the dam. Local culture tells us that traditionally these Chinese families must remain with their dead relatives who are buried on land that has passed through generations. Some are refusing to leave. I am on deck for most of the little gorges tour with XY. We take many pictures. Irreplaceable pictures really, because a fraction of what we see today will most certainly be gone tomorrow. The mighty dam is slowly filling, downstream from our current position.
Its raining and the boat's foghorn resonates off the walls of the gorges making a huge echo of reverb. The entrance and exit to the little gorges is announced by a high arc of steel joining the two sides which now looms out of the mist. We moor up in Wushan back on the main Yangtze river. I am drinking beer on the quayside when I meet up with three Kiwis. We head to our boat's fifth floor karaoke and continue our guzzling up there. A little later, I offer the resident Chinese crowd an aca-pella rendition of " My ol' man's a dustman, he wears a dustman's hat.
The Yangtze river
He wears gawd blimey trousers and he lives in a council flat " ad continuum..... while imitating the cockney style of dancing. The Chinese onlookers all clap while nodding and grinning. The New Zelanders have left. I am getting on famously well with Miss XY but doubt her mother approves of the friendship very much. Not that XY cares. She has a rebellious streak and likes to poke her tongue out. I'm just grateful to have a translator. There is a lot of information available on this trip, and I understand none of it. I suppose I could have paid extra for a proper foreigner version of the trip, but actually I'm pleased I didn't. The tour guide chap visits the cabin again to advise us that for the bargain price of 150 Yuan we can leave the boat as it enters the dam project. Take a guided tour of the innards of the dam and power station. Then rejoin the boat afterwards. I am not interested in this little jaunt. Because I already know that I want to remain on the deck of the boat as it passes through the huge locks to navigate down river. I begin to get the feeling I may not be allowed to, in case I am a spy or some militant environmentalist. But it's just my money they're after and seeing that they shan't be getting any of it, they leave me be.
The Three Gorges dam is 5 times the size of the USA's Hoover dam. Approximately 2,300 meters long and 185 meters high . 27 million cubic meters of reinforced concrete have been used in its construction. Which is a lot of wheelbarrows. Our boat will approach the back of the dam and in order to navigate around it, sail into the first of several locks, each 280 meters long and 35 meters wide. There is also rumoured to be a 'ship lift ' which can carry ships of 3,000 tons in an oversize elevator.
Once inside, I see we have neighbours. I count a flotilla of three passenger boats like ours, and five commercial freighters - all inside the lock together. The freighters are piled high with construction materials. The sides of the lock are shiny cliffs of steel. There are the sounds of industry, radios and distant tannoys. And since it's night time we are enjoying this spectacle under fluorescent lighting adding to the feeling that we have left the world and been devoured by a mechanical dragon.
The spectacle draws on as we move through the succession of super-locks which empty out in stages like huge steps under the night sky. The scale of it is mind bending. To emerge at the foot of the dam ready to sail ahead. It's about 1.30am when I return from deck to an empty cabin. My companions do not join me in the cabin until nearly breakfast time. Evidently their guided tour of the guts of the dam didn't synchronise properly with the sequence the boat was making through the locks. They are cold, hungry and look pretty cheesed off.
Next ; Yangshuo, Mei Yu
