Our river cruise

Our tour of the Yangzi River began in Chongqing. I don’t know why I was surprised, but it startled me I guess that they segregated the waiguoren from the Chinese people. We had our own English-speaking tour guides, our own ship announcements, activities, everything. (Well, we were all together for the nightly entertainment—the crew prepared karaoke songs and minority-group dances for us, and had some games for us to play. Daniel got drafted to play musical chairs with the kids, and then again to dance the “funky chicken.” Tee hee hee.) Our table-mates for meals were all waiguoren of course—4 Canadians and 2 New Zealanders. They were all really nice, and we enjoyed their company. Daniel was thrilled to have someone other than me to talk to. Apparently at first they thought Daniel and I were dating; one of them asked Daniel how long he’d known me, and Daniel was a little confused before he figured it out and explained that we’re brother and sister.

Our first shore excursion was a temple in the “ghost city” of Fuling—didn’t see any ghosts, and the temple decorations were a little strange, but there was some pretty scenery. I got into a conversation with some monks in one of the temples; they’d stopped to look at Daniel’s feet and measure how tall they were next to Daniel. We chatted for a few minutes—it’s always really interesting to see what people want to talk about. The monks told me they didn’t like George W. Bush; I told him a lot of American felt the same way, but that he was our president nonetheless. They asked me if I thought the Iraq war was a mistake. I translated for Daniel and asked what he though; he just looked at me like, “I can’t believe you’re talking politics with MONKS!” and shrugged. I told them I thought maybe it was a mistake, but that I hoped things would be better there in the future. They seemed to accept that.

The next day we went through the first two gorges and enjoyed the stunning scenery. The water of the Yangzi is a brownish-yellow—not really something I’d want to swim in as it’s no doubt polluted, but I think the color mostly comes from silt. Where tributary rivers and streams flowed into the Yangzi, the water was more green/blue. It was all really pretty. All along the river there were signs posed on the banks, showing the level the water would rise to when the Three Gorges Dam project is completed. The water’s already risen a significant amount; several towns are already underwater. Over a million people have had to be resettled. That afternoon we got of the big boat and onto a ferry, which took us up one of the tributary rivers, where we got out of the ferry and into small “peapod” boats that “trackers” paddled and pulled up the stream. Those guys WORK for a living. The water here was clear, and the surrounding mountains incredibly beautiful.

That night we went through the ship locks at the Three Gorges Dam site. There are 5 locks, but the water hasn’t risen high enough yet to make the first lock necessary. It took about 3.5 hours to go through the locks; I went to sleep after the first lock because it was already 1 a.m., and the classical Chinese music “Butterfly Lovers” would be piped through the ship as our wake-up call at 6:30 the next morning.

We woke up to “Butterfly Lovers,” had breakfast, then took a tour of the dam project. The dam is massive, and I have to say the whole compound was impressive. There’s still some controversy about the dam of course, and it has already had some cracks in the concrete, although the Chinese government says they’re normal for big dams and have already been repaired. It would be disaster on a massive, massive scale if this thing burst.

We got of the ship that afternoon and saw a little of the city of Yichang before catching our flight back to Shanghai, ending our grand tour. It was a wonderful trip.