Three Gorges & The Yangzi River

  Chongqing, Chongqing, China
Sunday, May 4, 2008

Chinese flag blowing on the stern of the boat

China's mightiest - and the world's third longest river after the Nile and Amazon.
The Yangzi is 6300km long and starts it life as the snow melts in the south west china before it spills into Tibet, swelling though 7 Chinese provinces, sucking in water from hundreds if tributaries and powerfully rolling into East China Sea just North of Shanghai.
Mainly just as my preferred and a good alternative from trains and buses, I choose to spend 4 days on this river traveling upstream from Yichang to Chongqing. I decided to choose this section as it pasted though the Three Gorses and few riverine panoramas inspire such awe as this. The vast rock chasms that have been sculpted over aeon's by the flow of this huge river.

Half finsihed bridge

I started the trip near the controversial three gorges dam, China's biggest engineering project since the Great Wall. It was completed a couple of years ago and will eventually back the river up for 550km, flood an area the size of Singapore and wash away the homes of over two million people. It will rank as the worlds largest dam - an epic show of communist power and evidence of mans dominance over capricious nature and the 21st century symbol of a new superpower. It will have a hydroelectric production capacity equivalent to 18 Dungeness's (nuclear power stations). The river has seasonal variations in water level of 50 meter's! The dam could also create another world record although this one is not quite so impressive. As the water begins to slow, so will loose its ability to oxygenate. The untreated waste that's pours into the river from over 40 towns and 400 factories, as well as toxic materials and pollutants from industrial sites will create a 480km long septic tank, the worlds largest toilet...nice!

What life jacket I hear you say?

Fortunately as I saw the river it still remained clean and enjoyable, I also made a small side track where I had to get on the a smaller boat for the first bit, then and even smaller (and unsafe) wooden boat with what looked like a 60's lawn mower engine strapped precariously to the back. I traveled up the Small Three Gorges (or they like to say in Chinglish, the Lesser Three Gorges) which felt higher then the other gorges as the river was so much narrower.

Honestly....

Most people travel in the other direction, where you can normally arrange some sort of English/ tourist guide boat but not many people go this way. I had a bit of dream to try and buy some sort of old wooden dugout canoe and traveling up the river myself and just camping along the banks, but after seeing the sheer size of it I decided that I try and jump on a boat. After inquiring at the port area there ended up being one that left the port in about an hour after I got there, which was convenient. It was full or old Chinese people who were all surprisingly good fun and up for playing cards and drinking lots!