We spent the next four nights aboard a boat on the Yangtze River. The original schedule included a one-hour flight from Changhai to Wuhan, followed by a five-hour bus ride to Yichang. We were very happy to give up the bus ride for a two-hour flight from Shanghai directly to Yichang.
On our bus ride from the airport to our boat we stopped at a small museum. The last room was filled with duplicate artifacts that the museum was trying to sell in order to help build a new and larger museum. When construction began on the Three Gorges Dam, a large number of artifacts were uncovered. The government gave the museum two years to complete their excavations before resuming dam construction. The red jade dragon boat was listed for $2000 US.
When Richard saw this red jade dragon boat, he asked immediately, “Does that include shipping to the United States?” This was not Richard’s first purchase. He had already bought two vases and a silk art piece and would later buy a large coffee table. We are all anxious to learn whether or not the Chinese government will allow this artifact to be shipped out of the country.
The next morning I went on an optional excursion up a side canyon. It was all carefully staged Disney style, but done beautifully and it was great fun.
In the afternoon we did a tour of the dam. There have been hundreds of thousands of people displaced and countless artifacts forever submerged. The government wants to put a positive face on the project and the tours are full of propaganda and manicured landscapes. We were taken to the high point at the right on this model. I didn’t get any good pictures of the actual dam because of the thick fog.
All this time our boat was docked below the dam. We finally got started through the locks at about midnight. There are five locks for ships headed upstream and five for ships headed downstream. It was daylight by the time we got through the fifth lock.
The Yangtze is actually a huge reservoir rather than a river. The gorges must have been much more spectacular when the Yangtze was still a river.
The best views were on an excursion in small boats up a side canyon.
There were a few temples and other historic buildings that happened to be above the high water mark.
But most of the buildings were modern and tall.
Our home visit was to a family that had been relocated because of the Three Gorges Dam. They had a three-story unit with a footprint large enough for a living room and three bedrooms on the second level, occupied by three generations of the family. The tenants operated a small store on of the ground level, which seemed to be very common in the neighborhood. The third level was vacant, possibly awaiting future additions to the extended family. People in the neighborhood obviously raise a lot of their own vegetables, as indicated in this photo.
Our Yangtze cruise ended in Chongqing, a city with a population of well over twenty million. No trip to China would be complete without seeing a Panda. They are indeed as cute as advertised.
While still at the zoo, I was challenged to a game of Hacky Sack. I don’t know why I seem to get picked on, but I did my best to uphold the image of a friendly visiting American.
Our last stop in Changqing was to visit a pair of World War II museums. The first honors General Joseph Warren Stilwell, an American general who contributed to the Chinese fight against Japan. Across the street is the Flying Tigers Museum. The First American Volunteer Group, nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps, Navy, and Marine Corps, recruited under presidential authority.
One of the perks of visiting the Yangtze is that we are no longer allowed to give blood, at least for 12 months after our visit. It is a designated Malaria zone, so we might have bad blood. No symptoms yet. Now we learn that a blood transfusion from a young person may protect old people from memory loss. Maybe nobody will want our blood, even after a year.
Next stop: Xi’an