In the morning, the weather had not improved at all. The scenery however, had changed. During the night, the ship had moved a short way up stream. We are above the Three Gorges Dam. That is to say, we are in the reservoir part. It does not feel much like a reservoir because of the way it is formed out of steep sided mountains. The water underneath us is deep. The dam wall is 185 m high so the water here is up to 175 m deeper than it used to be. 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,350 villages were flooded by the reservoir. 1.4 million people needed to move. These people were moved to new homes by the Chinese government, which considered the displacement justified by the flood protection provided for the communities downstream of the dam. Many of the displaced people struggled to find work and their living standards declined. Older people were especially badly affected. Younger generations benefited from the educational and career opportunities afforded by moving to large cities.
I was a bit disappointed that we had moved during the night when I could not see anything. After breakfast, we did go on a cruise but not in our big river boat. We were scheduled to go on a much smaller boat to have a look up some of the smaller gorges off to the side of the main river. I imagined a relaxing couple of hours, sitting comfortably, enjoying the sights of the river. The reality was loads of people crowded onto a small boat. Inside, all the seats were rapidly snapped up. That was ok because I could not take good photographs through a grubby window. Up on the top deck there was fresh air and, again, a great mass of people manoeuvring for a good position near the railings.
The trip was a couple of hours but it was far from relaxing. Food and drink were being sold. Obviously, it was at extra cost but the bigger problem was that food appeared to universally involve meat or fish. I wanted a cheese sandwich not a bowl of noodles with squid tentacles and the offal of unspecified animals. On the top deck, I braced myself against the railings as best I could and tried to ignore the drizzle. We steamed up a gorge along with a small flotilla of similar ships. It was moderately interesting. Announcements were made very loudly and in Chinese. This might have been a commentary on where we were or it could have been advertising for the noodle pots. We passed a few interesting rock formations, a small temple and eventually arrived underneath a suspension bridge. I tried to take a few photographs although it was not always easy to get an image that did not include somebody’s head.
The skipper did an excellent job with a three-point turn under the bridge. Then we set off back. This, predictably, was terribly similar to the trip out. Meanwhile below decks, many of the locals had polished off their noodles with offal and were falling asleep. I guess they had seen everything they needed to on the outward leg. Coming back was faster. We were going downstream. Before long we were back on our ship and, at long last, we got to do some river cruising on it. Sneaking around in the dark does not count.
The next section of the Yangtze River is narrow and steep. Two gorges in quick succession. The 40 km Wu Gorge is known for its quiet beauty, forest-covered mountains and cliffs so sheer that the sun barely penetrates the precipices. That is what the brochure states. If the clouds cleared then you still would not be able to see the sun. Then comes the more dramatic Qutang Gorge. 8 km long and 150 m high. There is no problem with the water depth. No danger of shallows. After the dam was built, the water level rose by over a hundred metres. The walls of the canyon are steep. There are no shallows. It was fun to sit out on deck watching the boat navigate the narrow passage. I imagine the gorge must have been truly spectacular before they were filled with water. Some ships were coming the other way, so I amused myself by waving at them.
We passed a temple and a town and a pagoda and many, many cliffs. Some of the rock faces had writing on them. I could not understand the Chinese characters but imagined them to be state approved words of inspiration and encouragement.
An hour or so before sunset we arrived at Wanzhou. Here we moored up for the night along with many other tourist boats. One particularly caught my attention in that it was dressed up as a dragon. A gold tourist ship dragon. Looked great from a distance but when we got closer, we could see that it was a bit tatty. Good effort though.
