Cruising through The Gorges

China Day 12

Today started out somewhat quietly, and then got busy towards the end!  Got up early to do tai chi with "Dr. Lee."  Then after breakfast went to a lesson on how to play Mah Jong.  Pretty complicated game even though our Chinese teacher said she was giving us Mah Jong 101!  By about 11:15 the ship began its journey through the three gorges, which are absolutely spectacular to see.  It was very rainy/cloudy this morning but by midday the sun was coming through the haze, making it exceedingly hot.  I stood out on deck as long as I could stand the heat then came inside where the AC makes it bearable.  For part of the afternoon I sat on my own balcony and watched as we made our way through the second gorge, the Wu gorge.

The first and shortest gorge is the Qutang Gorge.  Its very scenic and majestic and goes for about 5 miles.  Then the next gorge is the Wu gorge, which is 28 miles long and has spectacular mountain scenery, with relocated villages dotting the hillsides and cliffs, and the occasional small waterfall coming down the side of the mountain.  The water is low now, at about 155 meters high. During the winter, it is 175 meters high and you can clearly see the high water mark on the gorges as you drift along.  The third gorge is the Xiling Gorge, at 47 miles long the longest of the bunch and in places pretty treacherous.   We're actually floating through that one now, although we can't see it because its dark!  As you go through the gorges the mountainsides are dotted with relocated villages, where folks were moved up the side of the mountain from the water's edge because the dam project flooded out their villages.  You can tell the villages are relocations because they are new, cement block homes, painted white.  The old village homes that were flooded out were usually made of mud and sticky rice!  You can see the farms the villagers have cultivated on the hillsides.  They use no machinery in their farming.  Its all done by human labor and aided by oxen.  They do have electricity, but not running water in their homes.  These villages are pretty remote, to say the least!  

At the end of the Wu gorge is a small relocated village, Badong, which is now more a city than a village as relocated families have swelled the population. It is connected with a suspension bridge to Guandukou which sits at the mouth of the Shennong stream.  We took our cruise ship to a dock in Badong, and transferred to a smaller ferry which then took us under the suspension bridge and into Bamboo gorge, a smaller but completely magnificent gorge that goes back into the area where one of the local ethnic minority peoples of China live.  They are the ancient Ba people, mountain dwellers who also fish and make their living from the river while also farming the hillsides.  The Tujia tribe were historically trackers who pulled boats along the Yangtze River by hand before the river was widened for the dam.  They are mountain peoples who live pretty simple and spartan life on the mountain, retaining many of their ancient customs.  Our local guide was a young woman of that tribe who was really delightful. As we rode through the Bamboo Gorge we saw one of the only remaining "hanging coffins" that used to be commonplace on the tops of these mountains.  The Ba people believed that when a person dies you need to get them as close to heaven as possible in order to help them get to heaven, so they would suspend coffins high up in crevices in the mountains. Years ago the practice was abandoned and the coffins that were all over those mountains were removed when the Three Gorges Dam project was started.  They were taken to museums.  This one was left so that there would be some record of what the mountains were like prior to the building of the dam project.

We rode into the Bamboo Gorge for about 50 minutes by ferry and then transferred into sampan boats, rowed by Tujia oarsmen, who are incredibly strong.  We took the small sampan far into the gorge.  It was fantastic to be so far into a side gorge and to see the wildness of the area.  We saw fish jumping out of the water, and a rickety suspension bridge that the Tujia peoples use to cross the gorge.  Their homes  are at the top of the mountain and they are remarkably agile at climbing up the steep and rocky cliffs.  Our local guide sang a folk song, a call and response song that alternated between her and one of the oarsmen.  It was really great fun.  After our foray into the gorge on the sampan we returned to the small ferry and then back to our cruise ship in Badong harbor.  On the way out of the gorge we saw macaque monkeys scampering along the shore, having come down the mountain for water from the river.  Just as we were arriving back at Badong an enormous and somewhat ferocious thunderstorm came through, so we disembarked from the ferry to our cruise ship amidst crackling lightning and ear splitting thunder!  It was pretty dramatic to set sail for the evening in the midst of that storm!  Tonight at about midnight we will arrive at the ship lock at the Three Gorges Dam area and go through a series of 5 locks which takes about 4 hours.  When we wake up tomorrow we'll be on the other side of the dam.  Our cruise director suggested that we try to stay up to see at least the first half hour or so of the ship lock process.  

I've included pics of a couple of the gorges (I took literally hundreds so it was hard to pick, but here's a small taste, a boat we passed in the Bamboo gorge, me on the sampan, and our local guide on the sampan.

Tomorrow we tour the Three Gorges Dam and then depart our ship for a 5 hour bus ride to Wuhan where we spend one night before our flight to Hong Kong.  I won't have access easily tomorrow until we get to Wuhan!