Yangtze 3 Gorges trip

June 1-3, 2007 Friday - Sunday

Met Hongfeng at breakfast. She translated the schedule for our boat trip. She and I went to the little store for snacks for the bus ride. (1 flight) On our way we spotted some students in their graduation robes taking each other’s pictures. It is the same scene which is found in every American university at this time of the year.

At 10:20 a university car came to pick us up. We had 3 people with 1 large suitcase (ours) and 2 small backpacks (ours and Hongfeng’s). The driver had his 7 year old son and a full trunk of his stuff. Chuck sat in the front with a very large gift box of sesame oil on his lap. This was dropped off at the university parking lot.

We went to a central meeting point to get the tour’s bus to YiCheng. This bus was filled to the gills with people. We think that the tour company figures out how many people are going for the boat, and then sells the extra seats to people who want to go to YiCheng or someplace on the way. A few people were dropped off. When the bus came, there was a stampede for the seats. Hongfeng was expecting this and scurried to get us some. The bus left at 11:30 and got to YiCheng at about 4:30. We were met by the rep. from our tour who told us that we should get some dinner before boarding the boat. He actually took the 3 of us to a nearby place. (1 flight) We had 2 mushroom dishes, a soup with a potato like vegetable and some rice. At 6:00 we boarded the boat.

This consisted of hauling our stuff down these steps, across several boarding ramps and up a flight of stairs.

The important thing about these steps is that at the end of the trip, we will need to go back up them.

These boats have a star system just like hotels in China. 5 is the best. Our boat was a 2. We did have a “first class cabin”. That entitled us to a 2 person room with our own bathroom. We also could go onto the special front deck with small plastic stools and the enclosed front room with chairs. (We had cards that we gave the guard at the door when we entered this privileged area and then the cards were returned when we went out. The girl also had a large tea brewer and we could get cups of tea.) We were the only westerners on the boat.

It did not include meals. Some of the other tour groups on the boat had meals included – but ours did not. We could buy breakfast for 5¥ and lunch and dinner for 10¥. But we didn’t have a place in the eating room, so we were given take out. Breakfast consisted of a bowl of rice gruel, some legumes, a spicy vegetable, a steamed bun with meat filling and steamed bread. Lunch and dinner was rice and a variety of veggie dishes and meat/fish with vegetables. We picnicked in our rooms, because during meal time the viewing rooms were locked. This is an example of lunch and dinner.

Some of the lower class passengers had cup noodle which they reconstituted with the hot water from the boiler. There was a mahjong room which immediately had games started. I think that these people played night and day for the whole trip. The lower class rooms had 4 people (2 bunk beds), no bathroom and no TV. Lots of them set up card games between the bunks.

We had 2 very narrow twin beds with a reading lamp. Chuck kept banging his shoulder on the lamp.

A TV:

We also had an air conditioner. It is the metal box over the desk.

Our own bathroom (with western toilet) and a shower that used the whole bathroom as a stall. We were told that the water is only hot when the motors are running – so not to take a shower when the boat was stopped.

Hongfeng had mentioned that the boat didn’t provide toothbrushes and toothpaste like the hotels do. She didn’t include that they didn’t provide soap, towels or TOILET PAPER, so we hadn’t brought those things. I did have some little tubes of shampoo that we used as soap. I had lots of tissues for toilet paper and we used Chuck’s tee shirts as towels. For two nights, we could deal. Now, I basically find boat rides boring. In a funny way, the funkiness of this trip made it better.

We had a door that opened onto our own fenced in balcony.

We were next door to Hongfeng. She was sharing with a young man.

About ½ hour after the boat sailed, we went through the lock of a small dam. 2 hours after that we got to the big 3 Gorges Dam. It is a damn big dam. There are 5 locks in a row to get the boat to the level after the dam. They also will have an elevator for smaller boats so that they won’t have to wait as long. They put the boats into the lock 3 across and 5 deep. It takes quite awhile to load up all the boats in the lock. Our tour guide was out on the deck giving lots of info in Chinese. Hongfeng translated the salient points. We all watched the process for the 1^st lock and the transfer to the 2^nd lock. At that point it was getting late. The guide said, “You see one lock, you see them all.” And we all went to bed. I thought that perhaps the noises of the transferring from lock to lock (whistles and horns blow) would keep me awake. Nope, slept like a baby. This is what the lock looked like from our room.

Breakfast was from 5 -7. You want to be up early to see all of the scenery. The Chinese people all posed for pictures at every new rock. I think they want to show that they have been there. We had our pictures taken too.

By this time people were getting used to us and began to be quite friendly. Everyone who spoke any English at all, came up to talk with us. They asked us questions about what we were doing and were quite forthcoming about their own lives. One young woman was a teacher. She noticed that Hongfeng and the people next to her were discussing education and I explained that Hongfeng was a professor. She felt that Hongfeng was very lucky. Many people (especially women) of her generation were not educated. She said that her mother and her uncle could barely write their names.

We had an early lunch at 10:30 because at 11:00 we transferred to a small tour boat to go up the mini 3 gorges. We scurried and got seats on the 2^nd level, but then discovered that there was a top deck. We paid the surcharge to go up there. It was a little hot, so we ended up in the air conditioned driver’s cabin in very comfy seats and were served tea for the whole trip. The weather was fabulous and clear and a very good day for this. The pilot offered to let us steer, but we passed on the opportunity. We just took turns sitting next to him. Being in this cabin made the trip much better. In the regular seats, the young woman commentator talked non-stop for 4 hours. Hongfeng would have had a hard time sorting out what to point out to us. Instead we had the pilot pointing out the good stuff and Hongfeng could just tell us what he was saying.

There had been a storm so a lot of debris had washed down the river and all collected at one point. Small boats were picking up the stuff and carrying it away. Among the trash and wood debris there were 2 dead pigs. (Quite bloated)

Back to our home away from home for more steaming upstream and dinner.

At 6:00 we transferred to another small boat to visit the temple of the White Emperor. This was a real scene. We had to walk through 4 boats to get to the dock. All of the people on these boats were going to get on 2 small boats to go to the temple’s dock. Our guide had a system. He would tell us when we should be ready to leave the boat and depend on us to get to the dock on our own. Then he would meet us and give us our tickets for the next step and point us on our way. (Some of the other guides led their troops the whole way.) We were in a line that was moving through a 1 person doorway when suddenly there was a pushing, screaming phalanx shoving from the right. It was quite scary, because at the doorway there was a lip that you had to step over. If anyone had fallen they would have been crushed. Two women in front of us were screaming at each other, but nothing seemed to get settled. The Chinese are very good at moving groups of people from one place to another very quickly – no one dawdles, but they do like to push and shove.

The Temple of the White Emperor had 425 steps. They had guys with chairs that offered to carry you up or down. I think I saw a look of relief when Chuck said no thanks.

This was the view from ¾ way up.

These two cuties had their hair pulled into side pony tails which were wrapped with bands. I wanted them to turn around so that I could get a close up of how their hair was done, but they kept turning to face me.

It was a good thing that this excursion was in the early evening. It was really hot climbing all of the stairs and then climbing down again. There was the usual gauntlet of vendors on the way in and out. They all sing out “Just looking.”

It felt good to get back to our air conditioned cabin and another good night’s sleep.

24 flights today 1 flight each for breakfast, lunch & dinner, 1 flight each time we returned to the boat, 2 flights on the Mini 3 gorges boat, and 17 at the White Emperor temple.

The last day we got up at 5:30, had breakfast at 6 and left the boat at 6:30. The boat was going through the locks again and we were going to each and every overlook spot so that we would be able to see the damn dam in all of its glory from every angle. The real reason that they do this is because the locks are pretty boring and we have to be kept busy for 4 or 5 hours. Every time we stopped, the bus guide would say what time we had to be back on the bus. We all had to get back on the same bus each time so were given the license number to memorize. (There were a lot of buses all doing the same thing – because all of the boats in the locks were sending their passengers off.) The amazing thing was that no one was more than 2 minutes late. The latest person had been in the bathroom. (2 flights at highest overlook)

Then we moved on to a temple that had kept a record of the water levels through the years. 1830 was the high mark, ¾ of the way up the temple’s pillars. All temples have 4 levels (that means 4 flights of stairs – minimum, some have more than one flight between levels) It was possible to be blessed by a monk, but that was a treat we could forgo to. This gauntlet was really aggressive. We were all glad when our boat pulled up to the dock. To get to it, we had to pass through a 1^st class boat – it had a giant fish head and tail and lots of carvings and Chinese furniture. Also the entire boat was air conditioned. They made us (the hoi polloi) use the crew stairway.

Back on the boat (2 flights), lunch (1 flight) and then a small relaxing time through the last lock at the small dam and time to get off the boat. The guide said that he would carry our big suitcase. (What a relief!) (4 flights)

The bus back to Wuhan was even more crowded than the one going. We picked up a guy in a service area parking lot and he sat on an upturned bucket in the middle of the aisle for the whole trip. There was absolutely no leg room at all.

We had a late dinner at the guest house. Feng Liu came and had a beer with us so that he could hear about the trip. His department paid for our trip and he wouldn’t let us reimburse him for either it or the hotel room. We have been really treated well on this trip. Everyone has been tremendously helpful and have gone out of their way to make sure that we are OK.

Said goodbye to Hongfeng. She was going back to Hefei (by bus) in the morning.

10 flights