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| Yangtze river cruise scenery |
Background
It was nearly 3 years since I have left South Africa to work in Taiwan and China. Unlike many others, who regularly fly back home to take a breather on long journeys such as these, I stayed on without returning. I was home sick and pretty much stuck. I had no money to go back home. I was Asianised in my thinking and I feared going back to SA as a white Afrikaans man in a reverse Apartheid state of paying for the sins of the fathers, where like so many times prior, I could not find skilled employment, even though I had all the right qualifications.
It was July of 2006 and I was teaching English at a Business Institute in Shanghai. Pay was around 5000 Yuan (RMB) a month, plus I got free accommodation. But Shanghai was expensive, so I did some extra temporary teaching for a Chinese man who brought high end Korean high school students over to China as part of a cultural experience. He employed me as an English teacher on the weekends. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly he offered me 18 000 RMB to do an immersion Summer School program with a bunch of them in Shanghai. I agreed. It only started a couple of weeks later, so Gill, a Canadian colleague, suggested a trip to Chongqing and a cruise on the Yangtze river. No, I actually suggested it, since that was about the only famous spot I haven't been. It was a dream to take a cruise on the Yangtze or as they name it in China, Chang Jiang, which means long river. I lived 8 months prior in Wuhu, a city in Anhui province, on the banks of the Yangtze and saw the life on the river almost daily. A whole subculture of boat people, living and working on their boats, going upstream and downstream for generations, along the main artery of China. It fascinated me. There was one more experience left.
Gill and I flew from Shanghai to Chongqing, where we explored the city. See my blog spot of my trip to Chongqing for details. The cruise originated in Chongqing at one of the 13 docks of the impressive Chaotianmen river port, on a foggy late afternoon. To tone down on the romanticism, fog in China is mostly air pollution. I was just happy I could fulfill one of my dreams, a cruise on one of the longest rivers in the world. It was the closing of a chapter for me....and the river. With the Three Gorges dam nearly complete, much of what I saw was inundated within a couple of years. The water was dammed up, flooding whole civilizations and communities, thousands of years old. The Chinese government evicted and displaced more than a million people who lived along the river for generations, resettling them in newly built settlements, not only stripping them from their homes and livelihoods, but also from their heritage and identity. I was one of the last people to see the old China along this causeway, before it was flooded by the new technologically advanced and developed China, whose need for progress drowned out the cries for preservation and heritage. Now one would only be able to see it, if one can scuba. Even then, as probably the most polluted river in the world, visibility would be zero. The Three Gorges dam has seriously affected the speed of the flow of the river and its ability to cleanse itself.
It did not, however, drown out my enthusiasm and excitement as this memorable, no unforgettable, 3-day journey began.
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| At Chaotianmen port in Chongqing |
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| Map of the cruise |
The Yangtze is the world's third largest river at approximately 6000 km. The stretch we covered was only about 170 km.
Departure at Chongqing
Read here about our stay in Chongqing prior to our departure
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| First view of our ship |
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| Chaotianmen port in Chongqing |
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| River cruise advertisements - Chaotianmen port in Chongqing |
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| The dock we departed from at Chaotianmen port in Chongqing |
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| Chaotianmen port in Chongqing |
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| Chaotianmen port in Chongqing |
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| Our cruise ship docked at Chaotianmen port in Chongqing |
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| Our first stop the next morning at sunrise |
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| Our first stop the next morning at sunrise |
Onboard
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| The ship's dining lounge |
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| On the deck, posing with a fellow passenger |
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| Our cramped quarters |
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| lower deck passengers - 2nd and 3rd class |
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| Gill with some other expats we met on board on the upper deck |
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| Upper deck |
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| Lifeboat - At one of our stops in Wanzhou |
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| On the ship - Laundry |
River scenery en route to Wanzhou
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| River Barge |
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| Countryside along route |
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| River Barge |
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| Fair winds |
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| Countryside along route |
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| Countryside along route |
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| Smaller river ferry |
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| One of many boats to clean up the rubbish from the heavily polluted Yangtze |
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| Nearing Wanzhou |
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| Wanzhou |
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| River ferry |
The longest concrete arch bridge on earth leaps across the Yangtze river in one span of 1,378 feet (420 mtrs). Completed in 1997, the deck is 435 feet (133 mtrs) above the old river level - considerably less if measured to the current, full reservoir level that was created by the construction of the 3 Gorges Dam.
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| River barge - No. 2 bridge in the background |
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River barge coming into port with no. 2 bridge in the background
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| Wanzhou Yangtze River No. 2 Bridge |
Fengjie is a famous ancient town with a history of more than 2,000 years on the northern bank of the Yangtze River in the eastern part of Chongqing. It is the first city at the western end of the Yangtze Three Gorges and situated at the entrance of Qutang Gorge. Fengjie is situated in a dangerous terrain rarely seen anywhere else.
The inundation line to which level the water would rise after completion of the Three Gorges dam project, submerging the 2000-year-old Fengjie and many other ancient towns along the Yangtze which eventually displaced millions of people and their livelihoods
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| Inundation line |
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| Passing boat en route to Fengjie |
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| Fengjie 'port' where we were dropped off |
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| Small fish laid out to dry....local delicatessen perhaps? |
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| Fengjie riverboat |
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| One of the boats at 'anchor' in Fengjie 'port' |
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| Fengjie stalls |
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| Dried fish for sale |
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| Selfie at Fengjie |
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| View of the Yangtze from a hill in Fengjie |
Floating shop
A series of photos I took of this floating little 'shop'. The person pulls up his little shop alongside cruise ships and ferries to sell his goods.
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| Boat salesman |
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| Boat salesman |
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| Boat salesman |
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| Boat salesman |
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| Boat salesman |
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| Boat salesman |
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| Boat salesman |
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| Qutang, one of the 3 Gorges |
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| Qutang, one of the 3 Gorges |
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| Qutang, one of the 3 Gorges |
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| Qutang, one of the 3 Gorges |
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| Posing on the deck - Qutang, one of the 3 Gorges |
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| Qutang, one of the 3 Gorges - another cruise ship passing by |
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| Passing cruise ship |
The cleanup crew - Probably paid by the government, these little boats, fish out the junk from the world's most polluted river
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| clean-up crew |
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| clean-up crew |
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| Junk fishing |
Wushan town: Yangtze river 'corniche' along which we walked to catch tourist boats into the Daning River
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| Wushan - Hot & humid |
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| Wushan |
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| Wushan vendors |
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| Wushan - sunflower on the banks of the Yangtze |
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| Daning river where the 3 Little Gorges are located |
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| Daning river where the 3 Little Gorges are located |
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| Daning river where the 3 Little Gorges are located |
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| Posing on deck - Daning river |
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| A village on the banks that we briefly visited |
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| A village on the banks that we briefly visited |
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| Corn a'la Chinese |
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| Goats on the banks |
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| 3 Little Gorges - Daning river |
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| 3 Little Gorges - Daning river |
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| 3 Little Gorges - Daning river |
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| Snack stop on the Daning River |
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| 3 Little Gorges (Daning river) - Snack stop on the Daning River |
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| Snack stop on the Daning River |
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| Stop on the Daning River, where we hopped onto small boats to explore deeper |
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| On the small boat - Clearwater of the Daning River |
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| On the small boat - Clearwater of the Daning River |
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| On the sampan boat |
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| 3 Little Gorges - Daning river |
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| Captain of the sampan |
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| Passing sampan |
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| Passing sampan laoded with tourists |
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| Daning river where the 3 Little Gorges are located - river traffic |
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| Daning river where the 3 Little Gorges are located - river traffic |
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| Daning river where the 3 Little Gorges are located - river traffic |
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| Wu Gorge at dusk |
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| Wu Gorge at dusk |
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| Some river activity we stumbled upon |
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| River traffic |
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| Cargo Barge |
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| A hydrofoil passenger ferry that cuts travel time a lot....but not affordable for most |
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| Floating Docks |
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| Zigui - A stop on the Yangtze |
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| Xiling Gorge in the background |
The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest hydropower project and most notorious dam. The massive project sets records for a number of people displaced (more than 1.2 million), a number of cities and towns flooded (13 cities, 140 towns, 1,350 villages), and length of the reservoir (more than 600 kilometers). The project has been plagued by corruption, spiraling costs, environmental impacts, human rights violations, and resettlement difficulties. The Three Gorges Dam is a model for disaster, yet Chinese companies are replicating this model both domestically and internationally. Within China, huge hydropower cascades have been proposed and are being constructed in some of China’s most pristine and biologically and culturally diverse river basins - the Lancang (Upper Mekong) River, Nu (Salween) River and upstream of Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River and tributaries. The environmental impacts of the project are profound, and are likely to get worse as time goes on.
The submergence of hundreds of factories, mines, and waste dumps, and the presence of massive industrial centers upstream are creating a festering bog of effluent, silt, industrial pollutants and rubbish in the reservoir. Erosion of the reservoir and downstream riverbanks is causing landslides, and threatening one of the world’s biggest fisheries in the East China Sea. The weight of the reservoir's water has many scientists concerned over reservoir-induced seismicity. Critics have also argued that the project may have exacerbated recent droughts by withholding critical water supply to downstream users and ecosystems, and through the creation of a microclimate by its giant reservoir. In 2011, China's highest governing body for the first time officially acknowledged the "urgent problems" of the Three Gorges Dam. Construction began in 1994 with planned completion in 2009. I was there in 2006 while construction was still underway.
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| Massive cranes - Construction on the dam wall |
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| Tour buses that took us around on the dam wall |
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| With my fellow travelers |
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| Sluice gates opened |
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| View of the scale of the Three Gorges dam |
Nearing the end of our cruise, we stopped at this quaint picturesque village.
We left at sunset and reached Yichang at around midnight where we disembarked in the morning. Gill and I took a bus to Wuhan and flew back from there to Shanghai
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| Last stop |
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| Village vendor |
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| Shoe-polishing stand |
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| Street food |
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| Yum Yum |
Back to Wuhan by bus to catch a plane to Shanghai
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| Port at the village of our last stop |
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| Port at the village of our last stop |
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| The scenery on the way to Wuhan by bus |
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| Wuhan bridge |
We boarded a plane in Wuhan and flew back to Shanghai. I started at a 6-week summer camp in Shanghai for Korean teens, after which I flew back to South Africa. I spent 37 months in China and Taiwan in total, without visiting once. The reverse culture shock took me at least a year to cope with. This was my last big trip in China and probably the most memorable. Today no-one would be able to see the sights we saw, as these are all now inundated below 57 meters of water.
