Round the Bend - Shigu - first bend of the Yangtze
Trip Start
Jan 30, 2007
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29
639
Trip End
Dec 31, 2011
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Lijiang,
China
Sunday, March 23, 2008
But what if your mother is the one who does the change of direction? And what if your mother is the Yangtze River?
The significance of the first bend of the Yangtze river at Shigu cannot be underdone. Rushing down from the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, the mighty river was heading out of China into Vietnam, when is made an abrupt U-turn back into central China, giving water, life, silt and much more to millions.
Only an hour from Lijiang along a good paved road (with a toll), the trip winds and dips, passing gum trees with their trunks painted white, and leafy golden-leave trees
monument to naxi ferryman helping the red army
. Along the way, the question was formost in my mind: how did that big river change direction.We dropped through banks of red earth and forests of Yunnan pine into the valley dominated by the river. Soon, alongside us, the Yangtze ran low, pale blue, beset with shoals and sandbanks. It was winter, when the river is at its lowest. But it was still hard to tell how deep it was.
We went past the village of Shigu, caught a glimpse of the famous and much-photographed bridge, and carried onto a nearby village further up the valley, where our host's aunties offered us a delicious meal with fried lentil jelly and other local dishes. Leaving the relatives to their gambling efforts, we said goodbye to the people and dogs and inspected a boarded-up old temple, which was used as a school for while, but now sits vacant and decaying. We walked by huge cacti which grow at these lower altitudes and watched a tethered cow chew on corn stalks - its diet for half the year. Everything seemed to be a shade of brown: the cow; the corn stalks, the buildings.
Nearby, our host showed us her old family home, something of a holiday house also in a untended state
shigu tiehong bridge
. However, unlike the temple with its mud bricks eroding away and its timber frames rotting, this courtyard house was still used and loved. The owners were keen gardeners and used to have a nursery at their house - hence the plants growing in pots around the yard and under cover, including orchids. The owners also like to collect stones and objects from the river. We wandered around looking at the polished and rough minerals - from smooth stones criss-crossed by stripes to rocks like cauliflowers.
We walked into Shigu along the river, following tracks beside green fields before we reached the sandy banks of the Yangtze and strolled alongside through arcades of wirey trees. A wind picked up, roughing up the river and sending dust storms our way. In the trees were plastic bags and other debris either carried by the wind, or more ominously, by the river. People worked in the fields harvesting some green spinach, and loading it into large baskets to be carried on their backs to homes or markets.
Our guide pointed out the ridge line to our right - Sleeping Woman hill. Other hills faded into the distance.
Throughout our visit, despite the cool temperatures, what I liked most about the river was not its wide swinging turn, but its smell. That deep scent of river, water, sun into a fresh aroma of life and movement.
The river seemed only a few hundred metres wide, but i wouldn't have liked to swim it.
We crossed under the new bridge and ventured across the old swing bridge, an asthetically pleasing combo of iron and wood, with ornate gatehouses at each end of its 17m. The locals seemed to prefer to use this Teihong bridge instead of the new road bridge, even it was less of a direct route. We looked at the iron links holding the chain together and then walked across, feeling the gentle sway underfoot. By the way, this was only of a side stream (the Chongjiang)into the Yangtze, not the big river itself. The bridge is nevertheless important, for Shigu was an important place on the tea-horse route, the southern silk route, between Yunnan and Tibet and further on into India and the east.
On the road were the usual street stall hawking souvenirs and food. You can't actually discern the curve of the river unless you get up high, so we went up to the Long March memorial, which had the neccessary propaganda, large monument, art gallery and black and white photos. There were even some murals depicting the local peasant helping the Red Army across the river.
Interestingly, for me at least, is that the river has been more a political attraction than a geological curiousity. As well as the statue of the boatman helping the rather stern Red Army dude, the best view of the bend of the Yangtze actually comes from a painting which depicts the victorious Red Army, flanked by minority folk (in this case Naxi are the local ethnic minority, along with Yi, Lisu, and Tibetans).
The place Shigu gets its name not from the cliffs which block the river, but from the stone tablet in the shape of a drum, which records the merits of the headman of the Naxi in Lijiang during the Ming Dynasty. The white monument, some 15m in diameter and 70cm thick, records the feats of Baizhuang, from the ruling Mu family. Built around 1548-61, the plaque commemorates victory over an invading army of Tibetans. Rumour has it that the stone drum has a rip in it which ruptures before any war, but returns to its wholeness when peace returns.
The Yangtze's first bend is also recalled in folk stories, including this one:
three sister, the Nu, Lancang (Mekong) and Yangtze (known locally as Jinsha or river of golden sands) set off travelling together, but half way into their journey they quarreled, and the two older sister the Nu and Lancang carried on southward, while the Yangtze went looking for love and brightness in the east where the sun rises. At Shigu she said 'adios' to her sisters and broke away.
Geologists have other ideas and less colourful language to describe how the river made its turn. Land movement from the uplift of the mountains and the land forced the diver to divert and form the wide bay around Shigu. From the monuments and Long March hall you can make out over the flanking willows the wide sweep of the river. The width of the river means it is a good place to cross, and today you can take a ferry across to the other side and on low-flow days, you can even drift down towards the Tiger Leaping gorge, where the wide flowing river is squeezed between two mountain ranges more than 5000m high.
Back to the strategic importance of Shigu. For ages the ability to cross the Yangtze at Shigu has been vital for conqueering areas including Zhuge Liang, the military strategist, and Kublai Khan. The Chinese Workers and Peasants' Red Army were just one of a series of movements to cross here. In 1936 they crossed and went north to fight against the Japanese invaders.
At Shigu, despite all the history and significance, the Yangtze is placid and the surrounding hills, fields, willows and skies only add to that panoramic postcard quality. The climate here is mild, the soil fertile and very productive, and the locals seem happy enough struggling away in the fields, as tour buses drop off passengers for an hour in the town.
Even if the turn is only 140 degrees rather than a U-turn or V-turn as touted in some brochures, who cares?
