Yangtze River Trip

04/03/2015   The first weekend in April was the Qingming holiday (or Tomb Sweeping Day), kind of like our Memorial Day.  The Chinese tend their ancestor’s graves, leave wreaths and fruit offerings, burn fake paper money and set off firecrackers at the tombs.  We went with the BYU teachers group on a cruise down the Yangtze River, the longest river in China, the third longest river in the world.   BTW the Chinese don’t call it by that name and my students didn't know what I was talking about.  Some English person gave it that name and it stuck in Western countries.

On Friday we took a high speed train (first class seats – otherwise you might end up sitting on a bucket) to the city called Chongqing.  The train was fabulous – cruising speed of 200 km/h, very smooth ride.  A city of 30 million people, it claims to be the world’s largest metropolitan region.  Along the way we saw beautiful farms on rolling hills out the train windows.

 

High Speed Train

Countryside Farms

The Grand City Hall

We thought the city itself was beautiful.  Chongqing was also the capital of China for a long time before Peking, so it has a lot of history.  It has the river running through the middle of it and is set on hills, kind of like San Francisco.  It was very hot there already and is nicked named the furnace of China.  We were supposed to meet up with the rest of the BYU teachers who flew there earlier and took a side trip that morning.  But their bus was late getting to our rendezvous point and we spent about 3 hours outside in the heat waiting for them to arrive.  Apparently taking that elderly group is like trying to herd cats, plus too many women kept wanting to stop and shop and taking longer than planned for.  And I think one got lost and another fell and hurt herself when getting off the bus.

So we got to see a little bit of the Museum of the Three Gorges about how the dam on the river was thought of, planned for and built.  It also had propaganda displays about how the people (more than one million of them) were so happy to be displaced from their ancestral homes when the water filled up behind the dam.  It was too late for us to tour the Grand City Hall but we saw it from across the street and it looked pretty impressive.

Next stop was the Flying Tiger’s Museum.  It’s about the American volunteer group of fighter pilots in WWII who helped the Chinese fight the Japanese.  Apparently the old city of Chongqing (then called Chungking) was a major target for the Japanese because of the river.  And they are still grateful to us.  

Afterwards we headed to their uptown area similar to Times Square in NYC.  It was big and clean and pretty, full of high end stores.  We kept comparing it to what we don’t see in Chengdu.  We had a typical Chinese dinner.  (We are so looking forward to a typical American dinner!)

  

After dinner we were taken to the river and boarded our river cruise ship, the President #8.  It is advertised as a 5 star vessel – (maybe that is a bit generous).  It held 500 passengers.  Of course we had to compare it to cruise ships we've been on in America.  On this one each stateroom had a balcony, and the room and the bathroom were larger than what we have paid for in the US.  But you had to pay extra to use the small gym, the indoor pool, and to watch a movie.  

Breakfast and lunch were buffet, but only one seating time each.  There were choices of western style food mixed in with Chinese.  But when it was gone, it was gone; none of that 24 hour thing we are used to on US cruises.  Dinner was strictly set menu Chinese food.  And the evening entertainment?  Pretty lame. 

04/04/2015   We cruised all night to get to the next stop.  Today was hot and sunny.  The morning’s excursion was to Fengdu Ghost City.  We thought that maybe it referred to an old city drowned by the dammed up river.  Instead it is a large complex of shrines, temples and monasteries dedicated to the afterlife located on top of a mountain.  People visited there but no one actually ever lived there.  After the building of the Three Gorges Dam and the rising of the water level of the river more than 100 meters, it became separated from the city of Fengdu down below, which was rebuilt higher up the mountainside when the government relocated the people.

During lunch we continued down the river and stopped to get off and see the Shi Bao Zhai Pagoda.  It is a wooden 9 level wedding cake looking (Chinese style) structure seemingly glued on to a cliff side.  Basically it is a covered staircase for people to climb up.  Again it is on the top of mountain, now a small island in the middle of the river, with its village since submerged.  We lined up with the rest of the masses to climb to the top on rickety wooden stairs on the inside.  As shown in the picture, the ships parked side by side.  To get off our boat, we walked through 4 other ships to get to the gangway.  Very efficient and very carefully done.

Fengdu Ghost City

ShiBaoZhai pagoda

Our ship, the fifth on the far right

04/05/2015   Easter Sunday.  Needless to say, it wasn't celebrated on board.  This day was cool and raining.  Quite a contrast from when we started out.  The first shore excursion was Fengjie and the White Emperor City.  The city, now a deserted island, was an important location dating back 2000 years.  It is located at the mouth of the first of the three gorges, Qutang, which is pictured on the back of the ten yuan note.

White Emperor City

Entering Qutang Gorge

Qutang Gorge on back of the 10 yuan bill

After returning to the ship we began our trip into the first gorge, 8 km long.  We were followed by or followed several other ships doing the same thing.  Because of the cloud cover, it was eerily beautiful and quiet.  The valley sides were covered in deep green foliage.  Later we entered the second and very deep gorge, Wu, 45 km long.  It had jagged mountain peaks jutting up through the clouds. The Xiling Gorge was next, at 66 km.  This one was known in the past, before the dam, for treacherous rapids and rocks.  

Tall mountain peaks

Very beautiful mountain peaks

After lunch the ship docked and we boarded a smaller boat.  This took us up the Shennong Stream where we saw karst caves along the side walls and hanging wooden coffins from long ago.  How did they get them up there is still a mystery.  They believe that the higher you bury them, the easier it is for them to get to heaven.  And then we stopped and boarded even smaller water craft, open sampans (14 yards long and two yards wide), that were steered and hand rowed by local peasants.  As more young people go to the cities to work, they are running out of people willing and able to do this work.  The average age of the workers was in the 60’s.  After traveling upstream a ways they demonstrated how boats used to be towed over the difficult parts by men pulling them with ropes.  There were grooves in the rocks where the ropes had rubbed.  The men were poor villagers forced to perform this difficult labor and whipped if they slowed down.  Because they only owned one set of clothes, they pulled the boats naked as it was too hard on their clothes.  Thank goodness they did not demonstrate this part but we did see pictures.
 

Shennong Stream

Hanging coffins in the cracks

A hanging bridge over a smaller stream with a sampan

04/06/2015   After breakfast and repacking, we were put to shore at Zigui and loaded on buses, the beautiful and restful cruise part was over.  From here we were taken to Yichang, where we saw the Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, holding back the world’s largest reservoir.  It is not without controversy.  Finished in 2009, at least 1.3 million people have been relocated due to their cities, towns and villages being submerged.  But they are all very happy about it.  Due to the rainy conditions we didn't get a really good look at it, but what we saw was massive.  Then we were taken on a two hour bus ride to Wuhan where we boarded planes and flew back to our home cities.  As always, it is such a breath of fresh air to meet with our fellow teachers and swap stories and ideas.  It makes it worth the price gouging we take at the hands of our travel agency.