Yangtse Cruise Day 2: GORGEous
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
1
113
272
Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Wuzhou,
China
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
It has a very distinctive entrance. There is a sheer cliff to the right side and a strange wave-like mountain to the left. The gorge is pictured on another yuan note, although I can't remember which one. Short but dramatic, the gorge was only 8 km long. From the top deck you could see the rock layers on each side of the river that had been sliced away.
Once we had passed through the gorge the landscape faded back to more gently rolling hills. There was more activity along this stretch of the river
ugly modern cities along the river
. A lot of small towns and fields making there way up from the river. Our next stop was Wushan, the jumping-off point for the Little Three Gorges boat trip. Almost all of the towns along the river are modern and hideously ugly. They look almost as dead as the Ghost City we passed the day before. From the boat they appear to simply be collections of gray highrise buildings. There doesn't even seem to be any infrastructure linking them together. No parks or even many roads. When our boat docked we all piled out and moved along to a slightly smaller boat that would take us through the Little Three Gorges. This boat had passenger-style seating on the first two decks. You could sit and watch movies on the TV. Naturally, we wanted to go up on the top deck so we could actually see the reason we were doing this in the first place. So we went up to the top deck and sat down. We were soon told we needed to pay another 20 yuan per person to sit up here. Grrr. Apparently the upper deck was owned privately by this guy who provided the tables and chairs and bad tea. Not cool. Next they'll be charging a fee to climb the stairs between decks. Capitalism gone crazy.
So we complained and paid up and got a great view of the gorges as we passed through
subtle shading
. People came out to take pictures for the first couple minutes and then went downstairs to watch movies for the rest of the hour. The scenery was lovely. It's a lot more concentrated than the bigger three gorges and just as dramatic. We made one stop at Luo's Stockade giftshop. There were a bunch of people selling little birds on a stick (see pictures). Andy jumped at the chance. We reached another dock and we all piled out to get in even smaller boats to take a quick trip through the Mini Three Gorges (are you sensing a pattern here?). Everyone clambered on the boats and we of course ended up in the back. The back half of the boat was covered which meant you couldn't really see much of the gorges rising above your head. So that was fairly pointless. What we could see was fairly nice though - the gorge walls were very close together here. The guide handed out keychains to everyone, which seemed to be a gift. He talked to the group for a little while and then burst out into song. Everyone else joined in while we looked around in bewilderment. Apparently his job was to entertain and educate everyone. Then he handed over his pole and funny hat so that people could come up and get their picture taken. On the way back he collected money for the keychains.
We returned to the boat for the ride back out
cool bridge
. I wondered about the group of tourists who had paid for the trip and then sat on the top deck and played cards the whole time. They didn't even bother to go in the mini gorges. Then I watched them throw plastic bags of garbage into the beautiful green water they had come all the way out here to see. We stayed up on deck on the way back even though it was getting pretty cold. We looked for the 175m markers that indicate the highest reach of the waters. I took a picture of two houses next to each other with the marker right in between them. I bet that one guy is wishing he built his house a little higher. It's funny because when I was planning for this trip they indicated that the dam would be completed in 2008 so I thought we would see it before it disappeared. But they had completed it early, in 2006, and the water only has about 25m to go. So we were seeing the gorges pretty much in their flooded state, and they were still pretty impressive. It seems that the gorges will beat the rising water and continue to be an attraction in the future.
We made it back to our boat and ended up upstairs with the girls. We watched a DVD on the Three Gorges. The English must have been a direct translation of the Chinese and sounded almost ridiculous to our ears
the bridge again
. It was flowery language to the extreme. The gorges were described as being "like a melody after a rhapsody." this became a common description among us for the next couple of days. "Man, that chicken dish was like a melody after a rhapsody." The movie was interesting because it was made before the Three Gorges Project was begun. Most of the things they described no longer existed. Kind of sad really. Erin was disgusted with the propaganda about how the people on the river were happy to give up their homes and lives for the good of the country. The lady who cleans up came in and saw us listening to the movie at normal auditory levels. Trying to help, she turn it up to earsplitting because this is how the Chinese listen to it. ~Travis
