Three Gorges River Adventure

My cruise on the Yangzi River to see the Three Gorges was more of an
adventure than I anticipated. I went with five other volunteers from
the CCS program. We began our journey by flying from Xian to Chongqing,
which is a large, modern port city on the Yangzi. After wandering
around looking for a place to have dinner, we found Pizza Hut and
decided some Western comfort food sounded great. I ordered a small
veggie pizza and, as a special treat, a hot chocolate. I haven’t had
cheese since arriving in China. It tasted great!

We were then taken to our boat and to our room, which the six of us
were sharing–an interesting adventure in itself. I immediately asked
how to turn on the heat. The response from our Chinese guide was a
puzzled look and then a sad shaking of her head, followed by the
information that there was no heat any where on the boat! I had to take
a few deep breaths to keep from freaking out. As you may recall, before
booking my place on the trip, I specifically asked if the boat was
heated.  I was now committed to three days on a boat with no heat in
the middle of winter. Temperatures were probably somewhere in the low
50’s and 40’s, and the sky was overcast and drizzling at times.

Another important thing for you to know was the trip had been booked
on a domestic cruise, which meant we were traveling with Chinese people
who were on holiday. (A woman in our group speaks fluent Mandarin.)
There were things I enjoyed about this, including playing mahjong with
them for an afternoon and sharing their delight in the cruise and in
seeing the beauty of their country. The down-side was listening to all
of the announcements in Chinese and listening to Chinese karaoke, which
was just down the hall from our room.

The next three days I spent living in my hooded fleece top and down
jacket and enjoying the spectactular scenery of the Yangzi. The sides
of the Three Gorges rise dramatically toward the heavens, often with
steep rocky cliffs extending from the water to the sky.

The immensity
of the gorges made it difficult to accurately judge the height.
Depending on the location, it was 1000 to 1500 feet above the water
line is our best guess. It was peaceful and quiet with occasional
shipping boats passing by loaded with coal, cars, and semi-trucks.

In addition to the Three Gorges, we also visited the Three Small
Gorges, which took us to the Three Mini-Gorges, which we traversed in
small wooden boats lead by a Chinese man in a big tropical-looking hat
who sang songs to us and tried to get money from us. He was very
persistent at times. Several Westerners gave him money saying he
wouldn’t take no for an answer. I won this "round" with him. I was not
willing to be manipulated.

All of the Gorges were beautiful and special. When we were in the
small boat, I dipped my hand in the water and it was lukewarm, much
warmer than the air. At the end of the trip, we saw the world-famous
Three Gorges Dam, which is nearing completion. The water level has
already risen 100 meters with an additional 75 meters planned. Several
small towns and temples have been relocated to higher ground.

The dam is immense in width-1.4 miles-as it spans the Yangzi. Here
are other statistics about this famous dam at this link:
http://www.moafs.org/newsletter/April%202002/3gorgestats.htm.

At the end of the cruise, we took a taxi to our hotel where we had a
reservation in Yichang. When we arrived, it was a beautiful, very fancy
hotel with a big chandelier and columns in the lobby. I was excited.
Now I was going to have some heat. To my dismay, there was NO HEAT in
the lobby, which did not bode well for our rooms. They reassured me
there was heat in our rooms. I am nearly at my limit for tolerating the
cold. I think I’ve got it worked out to keep warm tonight. Thank
goodness!  🙂

Even though there have been challenges, I’m delighted I did the
cruise. If I know what I know now, I might not do it again although I’m
sure a boat for foreigners in the warmer weather would have been MUCH
more comfortable.