Down the Yangze River
From it’s origins in Tibet through Tiger Leaping Gorge to Chonqing every Chinese calls China’s longest river Chang Jiang and at 6300km is the third longest in the world. From Chongqing to the North China Sea just north of Shanghai, this river is known as the Yangze by Westerners. Along the way lie the three gorges, regarded by many as one of the great scenic attractions of China…at least for now.

By 2009 when the mega Three Gorges Dam is completed, the gorges will become part of history…nearly 2 million people will have been dislocated…the water will back up for 550km and flood an area the size of Singapore. The dam is five times as wide as the huge Hoover dam. The wall swallows up 26 million tons of concrete and 250,000 tons of steel. It will yield the equivalent of 18 nuclear power plants…four times more than an power station in Europe and eight times the capacity of the Nile’s Aswan Dam and half as much again as the world’s current largest river dam, the Itaipu Dam in Paraguay. and it is said that it will prevent flooding and relieve the region’s environmentally damaging dependency on fossil fuels. It will cost as much as $36 billion generating electricity that will have cost $2000 for every kilowatt of capacity.

The dam will be an epic show, Lonely Planet says, of the new 21st century Communist might and definitive proof of man’s dominance of nature. Li Peng needed a project of this magnitude, and stature says Simon Winchester in his “The River At The Centre of The World,” to revive his image and the morale of the Party, still shaken by the aftermath of Tiananmen Square tragedy.

Chinese Saying: You Can Always Fool a Foreigner
Foregoing the expensive luxury boats for foreigners, we managed to negotiate a ticket for a local Chinese boat down the Yangtze…paying two guys a dollar each to carry our luggage and lead us down the dock to the right boat which we never would have found by ourselves…although we later had our doubts about whether we were on the right boat anyway…doubts nurtured by other travellers’ stories about scams designed by smaller boats to cash in on the more expensive tickets.

Our tickets were for a four passenger compartment…so small all four people had difficulty all standing up at the same time…our fourth compartment mate being an older well-dressed Chinese man.

Waiting on the boat for an 8pm departure, we were immediately offered the entire compartment to ourselves for an additional 200 yuan (about $25) which we declined. When the older gentleman lit up a cigarette in violation of compartment rules we had our suspicion that he was a pawn in an effort…assuming we wouldn’t want a smoking partner…to extort extra money from us. But they can always fool a foreigner.

Then they came around again and wanted an extra $40 each for three side trips…only one we knew for sure we wanted…the trip down the three little gorges which is said to make it all worthwhile. The first trip was at 6:00am the next morning so we crawled into our bunks early. Waiting for sleep amid the constant noise and activity on the boat I thought about “The Gorge,” the music amphitheater in central Washington that sits absolutely on the edge of the Columbia Gorge. I really didn’t think anything I would see here could beat that. But you can always try to fool a foreigner.

A Chinese Adventure With Three Foreign Devils
Then at 2:30am…we hear banging on the door which swings open and the lights go on…a lady engages in lively conversation with our Chinese roommate of which we understand not a word. The Chinese man pulls out his ticket…it wasn’t clear who wasn’t where they were supposed to be.

The three of us responded typically the way we usually have on the whole China trip: Jana groans, oh it can’t be 6am yet as she pulls out her ticket and tries to figure it all out. I’m not moving, I said. Bob lay motionless with eyes closed…waiting for it all to sort itself out.

The lady leaves. Amid our confusion…and explanations to us in Chinese…our roommate suddenly says “bye bye” and flicks the light out as he leaves…but we had just gotten back to sleep when he came back and pointing to his nose delivered more explanations in Chinese. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with his nose. Then he pointed to his watch…oh, I thought…he points to his nose to indicate himself! Then he points to the door. He was to go at 7am. But you can always try to fool a foreigner.

On top of all this, during the night my heavy rubber slippers provided by the boat had fallen off the end of my upper bunk and hit the Chinese gentleman below me on the head…so before he left in the morning our Chinese friend pointed to my slippers and then to his head…sorry, sorry, sorry I begged him…later-peels of giddy laughter. Next time he sees Westerners on a tour he’ll probably get as far away from them as possible! Couldn’t fool a foreigner on this night.