Three Gorges

We left Wuhan early Friday morning and headed to Jinzhou to visit the Jinzhou Museum. We then had lunch and visited the Jinzhou Ancient City Wall, we then headed to Yichang and had dinner there and walked around doing a little shopping with some of the local vendors on the street and in the alleys. Afterwards we took the bus to Maoping dock to catch our boat. The overall bus ride was around 5 hours long. It was not comfortable, but we survived and got there and loaded on the boat around 8:30pm. We spent the night on the boat as it headed down the Yangtze River.

The next morning we took a smaller ferry boat up into the Shennong River, a smaller tributary of the Yangtze. It was amazing how fast the water color changed once we got off the Yangtze with its milky brown color, from all the sediment moving down it, to the green...almost emerald green of the Shennong River. It was clearer and clearer the further up the river we travelled.
Shennong is named after one of the Chinese emperors.

The ferry boat went as far up the Shennong as it could, and the ride up that river was breathtaking to say the least, the huge mountains all around us, the hanging bamboo, the locals on their boats, the 2,000 year old "hanging coffins" in the openings/caves of the mountains along the river...were all so amazing. The coffins are made of cedar, and no one knows how the people who put them there were able to do it. They've carbon dated them, and they are over 2,000 years old. Cedar is the perfect wood for such a coffin, bugs don't like it and it is very very hard so it lasts a long time.

Once the ferry couldn't go any further up the Shennong, we departed it and transferred over to a small boat called a sampan that held about 17 of us. Each of these small boats had 5 trackers, one who was the captain, and one who was 2nd captain. The trackers take us up to the rapids/the shallows of the river (where now the water is crystal clear and you can see all the many colorful rocks in the stream) and then PULL the boatload of people by rope and pushing the back of the boat through the shallow parts of the stream. It was an unreal effort on their part. I bet we had at least 2500 pounds in our little boat alone...and they did it! They then took us through the rapids back down the stream and to our ferry. It was really something else.

The trackers are the Tujia people, one of the minority in China. They are singers, and even as they were pulling us up the stream they had their work song of sorts going to help get over the stream and back down the river. They were so friendly and as each one loaded us on and of the boat, they put out their hands and made sure they had a firm grip on your hand so that you didn’t fall or slip. It was an unforgettable experience. There is some concern that once the 3 Gorges Dam floods this area, that these people will no longer be able to do this job, and that the tourism will be gone. I hope that is not the case.

We made it back to our large boat by ferry, enjoying the scenery once again. Because of the heat we stayed inside most of the day and slept. The heat was unbelievable. In the evening it had cooled down considerably and we go off the boat and took a short ride to the White Emperor’s Palace, which was situated on top of one of these tall mountains. The bus rude alone was worth it…the driver hanging the curves, and dashing down the mountains…honking his horn at everyone along the route to get out of the way! It was our own personal roller coaster…and more than once we thought it might be the last ride of our lives! But, we finally made it to the Palace in once piece.

Once there it was a major climb up the mountain. There were innumerable steps that took us to the palace on top of the mountain. There were men below that would carry people up the mountain on a type of sedan, if you wanted to pay for it…but everyone in our group who went to the top did so of their own power. It was beautiful along the way, and of course there were people selling their goods again all up the stairway. Once to the top, it was a maze of ponds and gardens, I got lost from the rest of the group and all the many Chinese tour groups for a few minutes, and it was so peaceful. After being in China for 2 weeks, one thing that I missed was having somewhere to go for silence or at least a little quiet. There are very few places in the parts of China we’ve visited where that can happen. (1.6 Billion people remember) The pagodas and the monastic temples are the exceptions most of the time, and one can understand at least one reason someone would decide to go and be in that life to get away from it all! I spent time alone taking pictures and just enjoying not having to listen or speak to anyone for a few minutes. It was nice to get away for a few moments on that mountain top. I ended up in the living quarters of the grounds keepers on the very tip top of the mountain. They didn't pay much attention to me and after a few photographs I left.

Once I made it back down to the group we took the death wish bus back down, and as we walked trough the little village to get back to our boat, we shopped and fireworks starting going off from one of the mountains above us! What better place to see a fireworks display than in CHINA!?! It was great. Once back on the boat we headed to the top deck and hung out up there for a couple of hours as the boat chugged its way back down the Yangtze through the night of a full moon. Then bedtime.

The next day we visited the Three Gorges Dam, but it was hard to see much of it because of the foggy morning. Even though, it was pretty impressive. After this we made a brief visit to Three Gorges University a sister school of Memphis University, and then took the bus back to Wuhan, which was about a 6 hour drive all together, finally arriving back to our home away from home, our dorm room on the Hubei University campus.

More pictures are HERE.