The Great Yichang

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

After visiting Shanghai, we flew to Yichang (宜昌), a city at the Eastern end of the Xiling Gorge (西陵峡), one of the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River.Our local guide, Tiger (Li Hu), told us that the city's name means "Easy and Prosperous." Evidently, it was so named because many crops thrive in the area (Spring: Wheat, Corn, Rapeseed (Canola), Summer: Rice, Fall: Tangerines, Winter: Cotton) and the city has long been a distribution center of goods, as well as a thriving port making trade easy.

As far as I could tell, the main focuses of local industry were the Gezhouba Hydra Project (1970-1988) and the Three Gorges Dam (1994-still not quite done). They even have a place called the "330 Area" which commemorates Chairman Mao's 3/30/56 visit to check the site of the first dam on the Yangtze River. Because there are so many dams in the area, it is considered the "Electricity Capital" of China.

Their local tourism slogan cracked me up. It was simply, "The Great Yichang." The idea was that when someone hears the slogan, they will be reminded of the better environment in Yichang - for example, that they have many green trees, cleaner air and thus a longer lifespan than other cities in China. I think they could use a little marketing help.

While not particularly relevant to the history or culture of the area, my favorite part was a local park that we visited. It was very local - not a tourist spot by any stretch of the imagination. It was nice to see what people might do on a lazy Sunday in Yichang. There were old men playing cards and Mah Jong in one area. There was a jumping castle and some arts and crafts tables for little kids in another area. But, best of all, there was a hybrid gym/playground for "kids of all ages."

Here we can see Ana and Damaris, two awesome ladies from our tour group, trying out some of the sweet cardio machines. There were swings, upper back and oblique machines, standard jungle gyms, ellipticals, monkey bars, and so much more. The most fun I had was using a machine that was something like a Gazelle Strider. It definitely felt great after all the time we spent going from bus to airplane to bus again. Seriously, if more gyms were as much fun as this, everyone would exercise all the time!