After a really nice time in Xi'an we took a long, 30 hour overnight train journey through Chengdu in the Sichuan Province to Municipality of Chongqing and the capital Chongqing City. On the train we met three Swedish people in the compartment next to us. One of them had spent a year in New Zealand attending secondary school in my old home town, Wainuiomata, so we spent a few hours dropping names and finding out all the common people we knew. At the end of a long journey we were greeted at the station by a member of the travel agent whom we had booked our river cruise with and were quickly taken to their offices and briefed on the logistics of the next few days. They also booked a cheap hotel for us and drove us right to the front door. For a cheap hotel it wasn't at all that bad and if it wasn't for the smog we would have had a grand view of the Yangtze from our room on the 13th floor.
After a good nights sleep we thought we should explore the city since we didn't have to be at the boat terminal until about 6pm. Chongqing is one of those anomalies in China - there are no bicycles. There are no bicycles because the city is full of steps and the city is full of steps because it is squeezed on a narrow hilly junction between the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. The city is also full of porters called Bang Bang Jun - the Stick Stick Army. They haul loads on bamboo poles balanced across their shoulders - anything from baskets of fruit to kitchen appliances. If you want anything moved, just call one of the Bang Bang Jun. I found the city very appealing although the heat was oppressive and the hills didn't make it easy. We spent the majority of the afternoon trying without success to find an internet cafe. We actually found two but the first one had just experienced a server crash and was closed indefinitely, and the second one was just closed, for good.
One of the faithful Bang Bang Jun
Late in the afternoon we battled the crowds and boarded our boat which was to be our home for the next two days. We had decided to travel 3rd class on the knowledge that the main difference between the classes was the size of vermin that invested your room - mosquito's in 1st class, spiders in 2nd, cockroaches in 3rd, rats in 4th and everything mentioned above plus chickens, cats, dogs, geese and possibly snakes in 5th class. Actually 5th class was just a plastic seat in the bowels of the boat which we only had to pass through on our way on and off the boat. After the typical mayhem when boarding any form of public transport we found our space on the boat which was an eight berth room on the starboard side. Our roommates consisted of 5 Chinese men and one angry German who hated everything about the cruise. It wasn't a pretty room and it wasn't a pretty boat but this was a Chinese tour boat and there wasn't much we could do about it. Thankfully I had scored the bed closest to the air conditioner and while my bed was ice cold the rest of the cabin was like an oven - on the second night with the air conditioner on full, it was 90F on the top bunks.
We both experienced a very poor first nights sleep but I had to be up at 5am for an early morning tour of Fengdu - one of the many towns to be flooded shortly by the Three Gorges Dam. Sara and the German decided to skip the tour in the hopes of catching up on some sleep. I met a Taiwanese man on the tour and he very graciously translated much of what the tour guide was saying otherwise I would have been quite bored. In the afternoon we both sat on the top deck of the boat and watched the towns and villages roll by. The Three Gorges Dam is by far the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, its wall roughly six times the length the Hoover Dam's, and the twenty-six turbines will produce 18,100 megawatts of electricity. Along the banks of the Yangtze, especially near major towns or temples, huge signs with red numbers mark the elevation above sea level. When the reservoir is finally at full capacity in 2009 the water level will reach 177m above sea level - towns like Fengdu currently sit at about 40m above sea level. It is mind boggling to see all these towns, the majestic scenery, the ancient tombs and know that within a decade they will all be lost below the reservoir. The upper Yangtze will become Lake Yangtze and the beautiful Three Gorges will never be the same.
The upper Yangtze
The reason for this boat trip was to see the gorges before they become flooded. To say that there are only three is a misleading - there are three massive gorges, the longest of which is 80km long, but there are numerous other gorges including the three little gorges which are not at long but just as dramatic. On the second morning we were woken at 6am after a much better sleep (we had switched bunks) and packed into smaller boats for a trip up the Daning River to see the little gorges. For both of us this was the highlight of the cruise, seeing the dramatic scenery close up and being able to sit at the front of the boat in the hot sun. The scenery was breathtaking. In the afternoon we drifted slowly down the Yangtze passed the new dam, through the lock system and into Yichang. But arriving at 10pm at night and a 3am train journey looming, things were about to take a turn for the worse.
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