|
|
Asia Travelogue, part 7
(The Three Gorges)
In
Jane until later that evening when she phoned our room. She told us that
the man at the Army Hotel had not been able to get her on the army cargo
plane, even after she paid him an extra 30 RMB. He had repeatedly asked
her to wait for an answer and was still asking her to wait when she
overheard someone else say that the plane had already left. She confronted
him with this information and he merely smiled and told her that he would
not be able to get her on the plane. She had then gone to the commercial
terminal and paid full-price for a seat on the afternoon flight. That she
was able to get on that flight was a pleasant surprise, because we did
thought there was only one commercial flight a day.
So where was Jane calling from? She had made it to
be staying at the Traffic Hotel. She had met three Chinese spoiled rich
kids on the plane who offered to treat her to dinner and put her up in the
same luxury hotel where they were staying. I thought it was bizarre, to
say the least, that Jane would agree to go to a hotel with three strange
guys she had just met on a plane, but then I remembered that this was the
same girl who had invited a Frenchman, whom she had met in an Internet chat
room, to come visit her. As you might imagine, Alan was less than thrilled
with Jane’s good fortune. However, Jane assured him that she had her own
room and key and that she had declined the guys’ invitation to go
barhopping. Besides, Alan knew there was nothing he could do about it. He
asked Jane for the name of the hotel and she claimed not to know. We would
have to wait for her to come to the Traffic Hotel the next morning.
When she showed up, she offered us complementary toothbrushes she had
obtained at the nameless luxury hotel and told us about having her very own
shower and a television with more than a dozen channels. It was like
hearing accounts of Xanadu. She also told us about
her new and improved
traveling companions. They too had been on vacation in
of them were the sons of high-ranking government officials; one of them was
the son of a provincial governor. So they had “gon shee” (remember that
word?) out the yin yang. They freely volunteered to Jane that they had
spent 60,000 RMB while in
home with them, I have no idea how they could have spent that much money.
Jane, Alan, and I had spent less than 2,000. A provincial governor in the
PRC earns around 2,000 RMB a month, so it is interesting that a son of a
provincial governor could help blow 60,000 RMB on a vacation. Where do you
suppose the extra money came from?
Jane just shrugged it off because that is the way of the world that she
lives in, but Alan wouldn’t let it drop. He groused about those three
Chinese guys, whom he had never met, for the rest of the trip. He disliked
them because they showed an interest in Jane, but that reason went
unvoiced. He came to view them as representative of everything that is
wrong with the PRC. It is supposed to be a worker’s paradise where class
division has been overturned by the revolution, and yet we see the sons of
party members traveling like princes on the money of their fathers which
was stolen through government corruption. Not only are they traveling on
their fathers’ dirty money, but they are also traveling on their fathers’
names. They made sure that everyone knew who their fathers were, which,
according to Jane, would get them half-priced hotel rooms and free travel.
I’m sure those perks were offered more out of fear than honor. Alan was
also quick to point out that despite their pockets bulging with cash while
making their way about
beggars who were scanning the crowds for the white faces of the “rich”
tourists.
What annoyed Alan even more was that the three princes had witnessed a sky
burial. The following description of a sky burial is taken from my
guidebook:
The most common way to dispose of the
dead in Tibet is to take the corpse
to a specially designated area outside the town or village, often at the
top of a mountain, chop it into pieces, and wait for the vultures and other
birds of prey to come and eat it. . . According to Mahayana Buddhist
beliefs, consciousness leaves the body about three days after clinical
death. From this moment on the corpse is considered truly lifeless, in
purpose fulfilled. The manner of disposal is considered a final act of
generosity, enabling other animals to be nourished by one’s remains.
Seeing a sky burial was another item on our to-do list that had to be moved
to our failure list. I suppose I could tell you that I wanted to witness
such a gruesome scene because the vultures picking at the dead Tibetan’s
bones would serve as a representation of the Chinese occupation, but the
truth is that I wanted to see it because the 13-year-old boy inside me
thought it sounded cool. We never saw a sky burial, but the three princes
did; they even had a police escort to the “burial” site. Alan couldn’t stand it.
After we checked out of the Traffic Hotel, we went to the main bus station
in
improving as we continued to make our way east. The bus was air
conditioned, with bucket seats that reclined. There was even a video
system. They played one Chinese movie and one American movie during the
trip. Each passenger was given a complementary bottle of water. There
were very few smokers, but unfortunately, the bus driver was one of them.
When we would stop, he would choose to stay on the bus while lighting up
and would keep the main passenger door closed to prevent any of his smoke
from escaping. Any passengers seeking fresh air had to exit from the rear
of the bus.
The purpose of our trip to Chung Qing was to book passage on a riverboat.
Before leaving for
rather than the train so as to add some diversity to our traveling. It
would make for a longer trip—we would be on the boat for 50 hours--but it
would be more pleasurable. This is because there would be nicer scenery
and more room for walking around and thereby escaping the cigarette smoke
of our bunkmates.
When making my travel arrangements to Asia, I had come across several tour
packages that included a boat trip along the
Three Gorges. I had wished I could work such a trip into my own vacation
plans, but I knew I wouldn't have time. So when Alan mentioned taking a
boat to
on the boat once before and assured me that I would get to see the high
canyon walls and the green vistas that I was hoping for. However, he
seemed more interested in talking about the dead bodies. The
is the filthiest river you’ll ever see. It contains the trash and raw
sewage of millions of Chinese. On Alan’s prior trip down the river, he
spotted three human bodies in the water. Nobody else onboard the boat
seemed to think such a site was noteworthy. I suppose they knew that there
were plenty more Chinese from wherever those bodies had come from. Alan
had been caught off-guard by the first body, but by the time the third one
floated by, he was ready with his camera and managed to snap a picture. He
said that if we were lucky, we would see some more floating corpses on our
trip. Maybe he thought that would make up for not seeing a sky burial in
While in the bus station in
departing from Chung Qing. Beside it was a placard containing several
photographs of the ship. They depicted a large dining
room with buffet
tables loaded with an array of food and dining tables covered with white
linen tablecloths complete with crystal and silver. The cabins were clean
and spacious, included private toilets and showers, and had daily maid
service. The only thing missing from the photographs was Kathy Lee
Gifford. It all looked very enticing, but I knew better than to think that
the riverboat Alan had in mind for us would look anything like the one on
the placard or in the travel brochures I had seen in America.
As I expected, when we reached the booking office for the cruise lines in
Chung Qing, Alan and Jane told the sales representative that we wanted the
cheapest boat they had. He removed from the top of his desk the catalog
containing pictures of long white cruise ships with brightly colored flags
flapping in the breeze and replaced it with a three-ring binder containing
typed pages listing only destinations and rates—no pictures. Alan told
Jane to ask for 5th class passage. I didn’t know it was possible to dilute
a boat ride down that far. Remember the bodies floating in the river?
That’s what I think of when I hear “5th class passage”. I was not
disappointed when the sales representative said that this particular boat
did not have a 5th class. The cheapest passage available that still
included a bed was 4th class. However, Jane explained that it was possible
to buy a cheaper ticket that merely gave us entry onto the boat. Instead
of a bed, we would have to sleep on the metal hull of the ship next to the
engine room. Aspiring cave-dweller Jane was all for this, but
neither Alan
nor I liked the idea of spending 50 hours stretched out on a metal
mattress
in the windowless belly of a boat like corpses in a morgue. We didn’t see
that as much of an improvement over the train. We decided to go with the
4th class passage.
Before boarding the boat, we went to Carfour and
bought several sacks of
groceries for the trip. Instead of buffet tables loaded with food like I
had seen in the pictures in
water. Jane claimed that the water was taken directly from the river, but
I don’t believe that to be true.
At the river port, we walked past several luxury cruise liners before
reaching our own boat. It looked like it had been a while since it had
received a fresh coat of paint and it didn’t have as many windows as the
other boats, but it didn’t look too bad. The biggest difference was that
the luxury cruise liners were filling up with white people, whereas the
only white people on our boat was Alan and me. Once we got underway, Alan
explained that the other boats were privately owned. Our boat was
government owned and operated and was therefore affordable to the average
Chinese citizen. The government tries to keep up the appearance of its
boats so as not to be embarrassed by the obvious superiority of the private
boats, but the contrast is unmistakable. The private boats are cleaner,
bigger, and faster. When one would pass us, white people with smiling
faces, dressed in bright colors, would wave to our boat. In response,
Chinese people dressed in blacks and browns would stare back with glum
expressions.
Our cabins were on the first deck of the boat along with the other 3rd and
4th class cabins. The only thing below us was the engine room and the
classless passengers with no beds. (There were also classless passengers
sleeping on the deck scattered about the boat.) The 2nd and 1st class
cabins were on the upper decks. However, Alan thought the 2nd class cabins
were restricted to a second boat that followed closely behind us. Our boat
also contained a non-complimentary dining hall that never seemed to be
open, a ballroom, arcade, and barbershop, none of which appeared to be
worth visiting. There were community showers for the 3rd and 4th class
passengers that were nothing more than several showerheads in one open
room; there was nothing blocking the view of passers-by when the door was
open. All three of us decided to once again go without showers. The
toilets were worse. There were no individual stalls, but merely a narrow
trough through which ran a constant flow of brown river water, which I
assume carried the sewage directly back to the river. The stench was
unspeakable.
We were unable to purchase three tickets for the same cabin, so Jane and
Alan were in one cabin and I was in another. Each cabin contained eight
bunk beds and a small TV that picked up two channels. The only floor space
was a narrow walkway between the bunks. There was no room for closets or
drawers. Each bed had a pillow and a grimy blanket. I was the last
passenger to arrive in my cabin. As usual, everyone stared when I entered.
One of the men immediately started talking to me in Mandarin and pointing
up. I had no idea what he was saying, but Alan told me to show him my
boarding pass. The man then nodded and stopped talking. Alan explained
that the man had been trying to tell me that I was on the wrong deck. He
couldn’t imagine that a white person would be travelling 4th class.
By the next morning, I was longing for the train. My cabin contained a
toddler and a screaming baby. All of the adults smoked. Although I was on
the top bunk, I could hear mice scurrying around on the floor and in the
walls. (I discovered later that mice had chewed through our grocery bags
and gotten into the food stored in Alan and Jane’s cabin.) People were
coming and going throughout the night and the light was never turned off.
I doubt that I slept for more than an hour.
Jane, bless her heart, convinced one of her cabin mates to trade cabins
with me so that I could move in with her and Alan that afternoon. Although
their cabin was just on the other side of the wall from mine, it was like
changing boats. None of their cabin mates smoked. They all appeared to be
18 or 19 years old and were traveling together. Each night, they would
turn the light out by ten o’clock and would not utter a peep until the next
morning. They were also quite friendly. At one of the port calls, they
even invited us to go ashore with them. As usual, they all refused our
food when we offered it to them, but that didn’t stop them from being
generous with their own. The friendliest one of the bunch bought
watermelon for all of us at one stop and bought ice cream bars at another.
From the moment I changed cabins, I enjoyed our boat ride down the
River
was too irresistible to remain in the cabin; I spent most of my time in the
bow of the boat on one of the upper decks. I thought it was odd that there
was not a single deckchair on the entire boat, but I managed to snag a
wooden stool that had been left on the deck by one of the 1st class
passengers. I sat far enough away from the engines for them to be nothing
more than a gentle hum. The weather was just right. A bright sun tanned
my arms and legs while a strong breeze kept it from becoming too warm.
The current was strong, but being that we were on a river, there were few
waves and so the boat seemed to glide forward without resistance.
Every so often we would pass by a large city, but for most of the trip, I
saw forested mountainsides and canyon walls too steep to be inhabited. It
was hard to believe that I was in the most populated country in the world.
For many miles, I saw more waterfalls than houses.
We began entering the Three Gorges area on the afternoon of the second day.
As indicated by the name, there are supposed to be three gorges, but it was
difficult for me to detect when we left one and entered another. I awoke on
the morning of the third day to find that we were already docked at a port
that was within the Three Gorges. Standing next to my bed was a
middle-aged Chinese woman shaking beads in my face. She was one of many
salespeople who had boarded the boat as soon as it had docked. She left
and then two other women came into our cabin to sell us a boat ride up a
tributary to a narrower gorge that is popular among tourists. Our
teenage friends managed to negotiate a discounted rate for all of us and so
we were invited along. Our boat would be at port for five hours to allow
people to go on day excursions to see the scenery. The women selling the
boat ride showed me a color brochure, which bragged that the place we would
be visiting was the “38th most popular attraction in
around my bed and did not see any other tour operators selling trips to any
of the attractions numbered 1 through 37, so I readily agreed to go to
number 38.
Judging by the attractive brochure, I had assumed that we had purchased our
day trip from a professional tour agency. I should have been more
observant and noticed that they had only one brochure and I was not allowed
to have it. It turned out that the women were using a brochure from
another tour agency. Rather than a tour agency, all they owned was a small
fishing boat. It is the kind you’ve probably seen in movies, with an area
in the back covered by a piece of arched metal. They had us sit on
unattached wooden benches in the bow of the boat.
The small outboard motor slowly pushed us up the
beginning of the tributary. It was easy to see where the tributary began
because there was a solid line of floating trash at the point where the
force of the current of the tributary equaled the opposing force of the
current of the Yangtze. On one side of the trash was the dirty brown sewer
water of the Yangtze and on the other was the clean blue mountain run-off
water of the tributary.
Just past the trash line, we ran the boat onto the bank and got out. We
walked along a steep gravel road that hugged the mountainside until we
reached a bridge high above the gorge containing the tributary. We stood
on the bridge for about ten minutes, taking pictures and watching the boats
passing beneath us, and then headed back to the boat. It was pretty, but
it couldn’t compare to Royal Gorge in
Back in the fishing boat, before starting up the motor, the lady captain
asked us if we wanted to swim. I thought she was joking, but Alan stripped
down to his army-surplus underwear and jumped in the water. Two of the
teenage boys joined him. They were swimming on the clean side of the trash
line, but the fact that the water was even touching the sewer water was
enough to keep me fully clothed and sitting on my wooden bench. I won’t
even eat the rice on a Fiesta Plate if it’s touching my refried beans; I
certainly wasn’t about to get in that water. Besides, that water had just
recently come down from the mountains and was freezing cold. Between the
sewage and the hypothermia-inducing temperature, I was expecting at any
moment for Alan to become one more floating corpse bumping into cruise
ships.
I thought there would be more to our excursion than a trip to the bridge?
the borrowed brochure certainly described more—but the
fishing boat turned
around and headed back to the docks. As soon as we got within eyesight of
the docks, the lady captain began jabbering excitedly. Jane translated for
us. The lady captain had spotted police on the riverbank and so we needed
to hide. Huh? She said that the police were checking boats carrying
passengers to make sure they were licensed to operate as tour boats. So,
we needed to hide in the shadows in the covered section of the boat. This
was my second clue that we were not dealing with a professional tour
agency. As our lady captain tried to smuggle her white cargo onto shore, I
thought about those illegal Chinese immigrants who are periodically
intercepted off the coast of
suddenly felt a bit of empathy.
After making it to the docks without being detected by the tour police, we
went into town for lunch and then returned to the big boat. An hour or so
later, we were once again coursing our way through the Three Gorges. I
stayed on deck as much as possible. Just before dusk, we arrived at the
Three Gorges Dam, still under construction. That was one more site I had
hoped to see but did not think I would get the chance. I don’t know how to
describe it other than to say it’s gargantuan. Imagine every piece of
concrete you’ve ever seen in your entire life brought together in one
place. I’ve heard it mentioned on the news from time to time over the past
several years, so you might already be aware of it. I think it is
considered to be the largest work of engineering in the history of mankind.
Once it is completed, it will generate enough electricity to supply the
needs of millions of Chinese living in several provinces.
What I did not know until I read a biography of Chairman Mao a few months
ago, was that the project was originally his idea.
According to The
Private Life of Chairman Mao, like Qin Shihuangdi,
the founding father of
imperial
monument that would live for centuries after him. Although he first
proposed the idea in the 1950’s, it was not approved until April 1992, more
than fifteen years after Mao’s death. It was approved despite the
reservations of a number of Chinese scientists and engineers. Its approval
is a reflection of the residual affects of the cult of personality that
lingers in the PRC to this day.
The project has generated considerable controversy around the world because
of the tremendous ecological damage that will result from damming the
our boat trip through the Three Gorges, we periodically saw large numbers
painted high on the canyon walls indicating where the water will reach once
the river is dammed. In some places, it looked like you would be able to
drop a twenty-story building in the flooded gorge and see it go out of
sight. In fact, the gorges are so high and the dam is so big that once the
dam is complete and the river is closed off, it will take another 20 years
for the water to reach the top.
Of course, in addition to causing ecological damage, the flooding will bury
many cities and villages. Consequently, ever since work on the dam first
began, the government has simultaneously been implementing the world’s
largest population relocation. Entire cities are being relocated above the
projected water line. This is a central planner’s dream made reality.
Complete modern cities are being built from scratch. We saw several of
them on our trip. Some of them looked like downtown
with skyscrapers, but without any people. It was actually a bit creepy to
see cities of that size with no signs of life whatsoever other than the
indolent movement of construction cranes. Sometimes we could look below
and see one of the cities that would eventually be replaced, it being
filled with signs of life such as cars on the streets and clothes on the
lines.
Something that struck me was that many of the villages being relocated are
simple farming villages. I wonder how the villagers will respond to being
uprooted and moved to a shiny
government officials and party leaders actually believe the communist
rhetoric they’ve been spouting all these years and think they can take a
rice farmer from his field, assign him to an office in a skyscraper, and
tell him that he is now an investment banker. During the Great Leap
Forward, thousands of professionals were sent to the
countryside to be
“reformed through labor”. Now, maybe the government thinks it will work
in
reverse. We shall see. Of course, the PRC is not willing to conduct this
grand civil and social engineering experiment on their own
dime. They have
been seeking international aid (i.e.
Looking at the cities that will be flooded twenty years from now, it
occurred to Alan that these underwater cities might attract scuba divers.
Even better, tourists might be willing to pay for submarine tours. He
jotted this down in his idea book. If any of you would like to invest your
life’s savings in Alan’s submarine tours of the underwater cities of the
Three Gorges, let me know. I will give you Alan’s e-mail address and he
will tell you where to wire your money.
When we reached the dam, we had to go through a lock that brought us down
to the level of the river on the other side. That was another first for
me. We then continued on to Yichang where the three
of us decided to end
our river cruise. Although we had not seen any dead bodies floating in the
water (other than two dead pigs), we had already seen what we had hoped to
see. By taking a bus the remainder of the distance to
shave off some traveling time for very little additional expense.
It was already dark, so we spent the night in Yichang.
We managed to find
a hotel right across the street from the port and bus station that charged
a mere 12 RMB apiece. That was by far the cheapest place we had found on
our entire trip and so Alan was ecstatic. It even came with a community
shower. However, the “shower” turned out to be a wooden chair next to a
pipe sticking up about three feet from the floor. You would sit in the
chair and allow cold water to shoot up into the air from the pipe and fall
on your head. Once again, we decided to go without showers.
The next morning, we boarded a bus for
still had a long way to go.