This "great, wide, wonderful, beautiful world" is full of superbly scenic places but it is only in the last couple of hundred years that people have become aware of their basic fragility and have begun to take care of them by creating national parks and nature reserves. You may laugh at "tree huggers" but they have the right idea. Our industrial, energy-demanding society has destroyed many priceless treasures. High on the list of these are the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River. Gigantic dams have shut them off forever. Along with them have gone much of an hereditary culture. More than a million Chinese have been uprooted from homes where their families had lived for generations and have been re-planted in what must be for them, a bewildering and confusing new world. .
We left Xian regretfully and flew to Wuhan for the long bus ride to Yichang where we were to spend the night and board ship for our eagerly anticipated river cruise. Next morning, after a quick look at Yichang, we made our way down a slippery hillside to where the boat was moored on the Yangtze near the entrance to the first gorge.
Everyone was excited at the thought of what we were about to see. This was a Smithsonian tour and the Institute had sent participants copies of Lyman Van Slyke's YANGTZE, an absorbing, finely written account of the river and its history, so we travelers were somewhat prepared for the grandeur we were about to view. Already in this part of Yichang, the scenery was beautiful. Everyone on board, the little M.S. Basha was untied and we sailed west into Chu-tang Gorge.
Three thousand foot high mountains towered on each side.
Here and there small waterfalls cascaded down them.
Anyone who has seen Yosemite knows its magnificence but the park covers a relatively small area. Imagine it multiplied a hundred times and you will have an idea of Chutang and the other Gorges. It was overwhelming--glorious vistas in every direction. we sailed through its five miles and then entered Wu, the Witches' Gorge. The great mountains were different here and more dramatic. Many of them rose straight up, perpendicularly for what looked like a thousand feet.
I saw the famous Goddess Peak among others but there was so much to gasp at that it was bewildering and, like my fellow travelers, I could scarcely take in the immensity and grandeur of what was before us.
We went in to dinner wishing we could stay on deck and keep looking at the Gorge but the food we ate that night was so good that view seeing was temporarily forgotten. It was the forerunner of a series of delicious meals. The voyage turned out to be a gourmet's dream trip. We ate fresh-caught, perfectly cooked fish and all kinds of wonderful Chinese dishes. At one meal there were meatballs in a ginger sauce that would have been food for the gods.
Our ship tied up at night so we entered Hsiling Gorge in the morning. Hsiling was less spectacular than the other two but still a great sight. We halted at a shore-side village and boarded a ferry which took us to a landing place for a trip on the Daning River, one of the Yangtze's many tributaries. We got into long flatboats and were poled up the river between thousand foot high steep-sided over-hanging cliffs to a rock-covered island.
This was such a tremendously exciting experience that our visit to the town of Fulin in the afternoon was anti-climatic. As we sailed up the Gorge, we had seen on the mountain sides the trails left by "trackers," the human dray horses who had once pulled junks upstream against the currents. John Hersey's A SINGLE PEBBLE paints a memorable word-portrait of this. Early in the morning of the third day, we stopped at the village of Shi Bao Zhai and hiked up the hill to the odd-looking temple on top.
From its windows there were fantastic views of the river below. The dam has covered the village but I have read that the temple has been left, a lonely memorial to an uprooted community. Feng Du was our last port of call.
It's an island now, with most of it submerged. I remember liking the glimpse we had of the "Ghost City" so named for its ancient necropolis. An hour later we arrived at Chongking and our unforgettable cruise on the Yangtze, the Chang Jiang (Long River) had come to its end.