A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Three Gorges, China

Well, I'm back at a computer sooner than expected, due to a six hour layover in a very uninteresting town before I catch my 3:00 AM train to Zhang Jia Jie park. So here we go!

The Chinese love big projects, and the Three Gorges Dam is a doozy. After 15 years of construction and filling, the completed dam will begin producing hydropower in 2009. The statistics related to the dam are staggering. The Chinese government has poured upwards of US$70 million into the project, with 60,000 workers operating around the clock on construction during its height. It hasn't been a smooth, efficient process either -- in 2000 a local official was executed for taking over a million dollars in bribes and 96 other officials were arrested. The dam itself is a mile and a quarter wide and 600 feet high, and when up to full capacity it will produce the equivalent of 18 nuclear plants worth of energy, one fifth of China's generating capacity. The dam will improve navigation on the Yahgtze (though passing the dam itself through five locks will be a pain) and it will provide much-needed flood control on a river that has claimed more than a miliion lives in the last 100 years. Those benefits, and the economic development that is expected to occur in its wake, would be considered the good news.

The bad news is perhaps even more overwhelming. In order to accomplish these world-record feats of power production and flood control, the Three Gorges Dam will back up the Yangtze for nearly 350 miles, displacing nearly two million people and their livelihoods and burying more than 8000 important archeological sites under millions of gallons of water. The potential environmental effects are daunting as well. As the river slows it may lose its ability to oxygenate, threatening many species of animal and plant. Additionally, thousands of tons of untreated waste from towns and factories along the river's length could make the Yangtze into one long septic tank. Silt deposits could affect ports in Chongqing and other cities upstream, and could potentially block the dam turbines. Another fear is a dam collapse. In 1975, two Chinese dams collapsed and killed 230,000 people. The death toll for a Three Gorges Dam disaster would be in the millions.

This elaborate expository preface explains, in part, why I was on that rickety, ratty boat for two days. You see, in June 2003 the construction will be complete, and they'll start the filling process behind the dam, substantially reducing the impact of the lovely natural wonder of the three gorges and various smaller tributary gorges nearby.

Cruises through the Three Gorges have long been popular with Chinese and foreigners alike, as it is considered one of the great scenic attractions of China. So you'd think, given that there are only a few weeks left before boats stop running for many months, that the cruises would be crammed with people. There are lots of boats, but ours was barely a quarter full, most likely due to SARS, which even the Chinese are starting to take seriously. It was also clear that the tour company has given up the ghost with respect to boat maintenance and cosmetic upkeep. OK, I admit it, the Red River was a dump.

I was travelling 3rd class, which means I shared a cabin and sink with seven other people in bunk beds, bathroom and showers down the hall. The bathroom was trench-style with waist-high partitions between "stalls" and no doors. You really have to learn to have no modesty or privacy in this country. The shower room resembles something from a 1950's prison movie. But maybe a Mexican prison movie -- it wasn't nearly nice enough for a US prison. Since everyone else on the boat seemed to share my fear of showering, I was at least able to use it as a changing room, though with communal showers and no locks, I had to be quick about it.

The boat did have a small restaurant, which had extremely limited operating times, outside of which they locked the room, the only nice place to sit and talk with people. Apart from dinners, I subsisted on oranges and cookies during the trip. The boat also features a bar and rooftop seating area, which nobody goes to because they charge you a dollar to sit up there. I paid the fee -- anything to avoid sitting in the room with six chainsmoking Chinese men.

The room setup actually wouldn't have been too bad if it had just been me and five chainsmoking Chinese men. Unfortunately, at the last minute a Chinese couple with a toddler boarded. Initially, as I heard another baby's muted screams through the wall to the next cabin, I was grateful that our toddler was so remarkably well-behaved. And in fact, during the day the child was an absolute angel. I was only once the lights went off that he became a banshee. You know how when a baby starts crying in a theater or party or something, the mother or father leaps to take the child outside so as not to disturb everyone else? Well, that's not the custom here, apparently. A baby starts crying, and everyone basically just sits there until he decides to stop. I had very dark thoughts about that toddler during our first night out.

The other strange Chinese custom that seemed decidedly discourteous from a Western point of view was that when someone got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he would turn the overhead light on, then leave it on while he walked down the hall, did the deed, and walked back. Why couldn't they turn off the light? Another great mystery of the Orient.

By now you're probably thinking that this trip sounds like a nightmare, but really it wasn't too bad. There were two other Americans on the boat (the only foreigners) and two Chinese who speak some English. It helped that I decided to approach the voyage like it was a camping trip rather than a cruise. That way I was just grateful for indoor plumbing and a dry and fairly clean place to sleep.

Since we got on the boat at 7:00 pm on the first evening, our first real tourist event was the morning of Day 2. And by morning, I mean practically night -- we were awoken at 5:30 am to go to the Ghost City of Mingshan Mountain. Now, when I heard "Ghost City" it conjured up visions of a Chinese version of an old west saloon-filled ghost town. Nothing could have been further from the reality.

The "ghost city" and its surrounding area said to be the home of ancient spirits and demons. And that may well be true -- the way they have manifested themselves in 2003 is in a cheesy tourist trap of epic proportions. I mean, tacky doesn't even begin to describe this place. First of all, the draw is not the city at all, though considering that it will be underwater in six years the name seems oddly prophetic. The "City of Ghosts" is actually a temple of sorts, devoted to various demons, devils, their activities, and the methods by which one escapes from hell and enters heaven and/or reincarnation.

It's the first temple I've been to in China with no monks and packed full of utterly sacreligious tour guides barking information to their groups through mini-megaphones, while inside the temple. And after ridiculing the matching-visored Chinese tour groups and their sheeplike obedience to their flag-toting guides, I was now one of those tourists, following behind while not understanding a single word, incredulous that I had paid six dollars for the privilege. The whole place was crawling with tourists and kitchy souvenir stands full of rubber masks, talismans, and for some reason, obnoxious squeaky toys. Though after running the gauntlet of souvenir hawkers trying to get my attention with those, I can fully believe that the netherworld is chock full of plastic squeak toys.

The "temple" portion of the complex was fairly typical Daoist fare, though hard to take seriously given the atmosphere and the fact that I believe the whole thing was built after 1982 "in the Tang style". But they couldn't stop there, oh no. Someone, somewhere, decided that in a "ghost city" they should have an elaborate cave-like haunted house, complete with demons, gods, torture changers, war scenes and all manner of bloody killings in museum diorama style. Frankly, the haunted house I worked in in high school was scarier, and we had way more effective lighting. Though I must conceded that the Chinese did get awfully graphic with the torture scenes.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the ghost city managed to top itself. For an extra 50 cents, we boarded the "ghost train", with carnival-style two-man cars on tracks doing a 90 second loop throug ha dark cavey area where things popped out at you and hung from the ceiling. Since they haven't bothered replacing many lightbulbs, however, we could only make out about half of it through the murk. Lord, what a waste of money and painful limping that morning was. If only I had opted for an additional three hours sleep.

Stay tuned for the next Three Gorges installment!

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren

*** Note: All information related to the dam was cribbed shamelessly from the Lonely Planet guide to China.

*** Chinese computers appear to dislike websites related to Three Gorges photographs, so you'll have to look for a link yourselves.
posted by Katy at 7:44 AM