Three Gorges Dam

In Yichang, we boarded the Victoria Star ship and headed west on the Yangtze River. Our path took us past the Gezhouba Dam and the Three Gorges Dam, Wushan, the Daning River tributary, Wanzhou and Feng Du before arriving in Chongqing. We only traveled 660 km (410 miles) along the river but somehow that took four days!

Our first shore excursion was to see the Three Gorges Dam in Sandouping, China which is in the middle of the Xiling Gorge, the first and longest of the three gorges on the Yangtze. Despite the fact that they say the dogs here bark at the sun, our weather was nice and allowed for a nice view with minimal mist/fog.

We took a look at the dam from both sides and got to enjoy a small museum with a 1:850 scale model of the whole project. There were also a few lookout areas and several nice landscape features - rocks, sculptures, fountains, flowers. I guess the tourism of the dam is as important as the whole electricity, flood control, irrigation package.

Here also, was a hilarious sign suggesting that we should not climb over the fence. Oh English as a second language, how I love thee!

Throughout this excursion, we were bombarded with reasons why the Three Gorges Dam was awesome and why Sandouping was such a perfect location for the dam. Here's a brief rundown of the facts...

The dam is huge! The signs said it was 2335 meters long, 185 meters high, 18 meters wide at the top and 130 meters wide at the bottom. That's damn big. Ha!

In Sandouping, the river is wider, so you can install more generators. Also, there was an existing island which helped with river diversion after the dam construction was underway. Lastly, there is a geologic advantage - the rocks are mostly granite near Sandouping compared with limestone elsewhere in the gorges. You can add the granite that you blast from the mountains into the cement needed to make the dam.

The Three Gorges Dam has a very large system of locks. It took ten years to build and has both an upstream and downstream chamber path. Each chamber can hold 4-10 ships and it takes roughly three hours for a ship to pass all the way through the locks. Also, they are nearly done with building an express ship elevator (will only take 4o minutes) which will be able to lift 12000 tons!

The construction plans were set into three phases: 1993-2003, 2004-2008 and completion in 2009. The Chinese government thinks they may be able to finish the dam ahead of schedule and under the originally estimated cost of $28 billion. Wow!

A funny story about the first phase of construction is that in the #1 Powerhouse (14 generators) the turbines and generators were built by foreign contractors from Germany, Switzerland, France and Canada. Then, in the #2 Powerhouse (12 generators) the Chinese were able to copy and backwards engineer their own after closely studying the foreign technology. The local guide, Echo (Wu Shin), refused to say which country's design they copied.

One crazy aspect of the second phase of construction is that the dam will be raising the river to a level of 175 meters above sea level to create a huge reservoir. This has flooded/will flood lots of cities, villages, farms, etc... and 1.5 million people are currently being relocated. I'm sure the local residents will find it weird to be able to sail over their old homes.

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!