Yangtze River Cruise

This is the longest river in China and the third longest in the world, with the largest dam in the world. There were no permanent bridges across it until 1957; today there are 76 bridges across the Yangtze, including 3 of the world’s 10 longest suspension bridges and the world’s third highest bridge (8 of the top 10 highest bridges are in China). China doesn’t do things by half.

Much of our time here has continued to be hot and muggy, and the day we toured the Three Gorges Dam, the mist hung low over the river so we couldn’t see much of the section with the hydroelectric power turbines. We did have nice views of the ship locks, but not as amazing as we were going to have when we actually went through onboard the ship.

The locks are in 5 stages, lifting the ships about 20 meters at each stage. When our ship entered the various stages, we were accompanied by two other ships, neatly positioned to fit within the massive steel walls, with huge doors keeping a 20-meter wall of water from crashing down on us. But once our stage filled with water and lifted us up, the huge doors opened and we passed through to the next stage. It was indeed impressive. And slightly terrifying, almost like a dystopian movie — trapped within a massive, massive steel cage.

Our cruise is upstream, so once we were through the dam, we saw all the vast area of China that was flooded by its construction. It was started in 1996, so those first 10 years of construction also involved the building of new cities on higher ground and the forced relocation of 1.4 million people before their homes were flooded. Many of these towns have clear demarcations of where the new city was started, above the flood line. They say that on some days one can see the remnants of homes down below the water line. And of course, as we come upon larger cities along the coastline: residential high rises. Always residential high rises.

There are also small fishing boats and fisherman along the shore of the river as well. And cargo ships. And shipbuilding plants. And residential high rises.

We’ve had three excursions: the tour of the dam, a small-boat tour of one of the Yangtze’s tributaries, and a tour of a 400-year-old, 9-story wooden pagoda . There is a couple from Sri Lanka by way of Australia who speak English and a family from Britain whose company we have really enjoyed, but otherwise we are mostly with Chinese speakers. The ship staff is absolutely lovely, and not only serve us all day but also entertain us at night, staging dances and modeling the styles of dress from various eras of Chinese history and from the different minority’s groups of China.

And they want to know why Anna doesn’t speak Chinese.