What a nice start to the morning--- opened the curtain and looked out the window. It was still cloudy but the shore of the Yangtze River at 6.30am was so beautiful and peaceful. Today we were supposed to enter the first of the Three Gorges, Qutong Gorge, at 9am, followed by an excursion up the Daning River to the Lesser Three Gorges.
After breakfast I took a strategic centre position at the front of the top deck, in the hope that I'll capture some good pictures of the Three Gorges. 9.15am came and went, and still no sight of the first gorge. Then the announcement came and informed us that the Lesser Three Gorges excursion had to be cancelled because Daning River was flooded due to heavy rain! Argh!! Well, I just hoped that the rain would not be pouring down when we went through the Three Gorges.
We made an alternative stop at Fengjie and visit Baidicheng (White Emperor City) before entering the first gorge. Fengjie would also be flooded after the completion of the dam and some people have already moved to the new Fengjie city on the higher ground of the opposite river bank.
Many of the older passengers decided not to go to the excursion after hearing that there would be a few hundred steps to climb (they learnt their lesson yesterday). Again I opted for the chairlift up to the top of the hill, a good idea as the path leading to the chairlift station gave a good glimpse of Qutong Gorge. Well, in 2009 there would no longer be a need to have the chairlift as the water would reach the city gate of Baidicheng.
There was a lot of history at Baidicheng, and it was an important strategic location for ancient warfare due to its geographical advantage. Compared to Fengdu, it was not as interesting unless you had a good knowledge of Chinese history.... but there were still ample of photo opportunities here.
We got back to the boat just after noon, in time to stuff ourselves silly with food again. After lunch we left Fengjie for the Three Gorges.
There were signs on the cliffs or hills along the river showing where the water levels would be after the completion of the dam. In 2003, the water would rise to 135m, and in 2009 it would rise to 175m. It's just difficult to imagine a dam holding that much water back.
It started to brighten up a bit. Hurray! Qutong Gorge, located between the towns of Fengjie and Daxi, was the first and the shortest gorge (about 8km, only took 15 minutes to go through) of the Three Gorges, but in my opinion it was the most spectacular. The water flowed very rapidly here and there were lots of whirlpools and waves crashing into one another. The steep cliff and numerous bends made this one of the most intensive 15 minutes of the whole trip--- it was hard work taking in all the spectacular views in such a short span of time. The only thing that spoilt this experience was some of the rather aggressive passengers who kept pushing around.
We sailed past Wushan, the city where we would have stopped if we had gone to the Daning River / Lesser Three Gorges excursion.
When we went through the second gorge (Wu Gorge), I went down to the lower deck which was a lot calmer, but then half of the passengers seemed to have disappeared on the top deck anyway--- it was probably too cold and windy for them. Wu Gorge, 45km in length between Wushan and Badong, was very different--- quite a bit wider and more mysterious due to the low clouds surrounding the mountains and cliffs. The most famous sight here was the 12 peaks, of which the Goddess Peak was the most famous. I was still trying to figure out what made Goddess Peak so special.... just a little rock sticking out at the top of the hill, but then it probably would look like a Goddess closeup!
The weather got gradually worse to the point it started raining and too dark for decent photos.
Our boat docked at the town of Zugui for the night. There was an opportunity to see some folk performance on-shore after dinner but I gave that a miss. Instead I stayed on boat and showed the crew how to make gongfu tea and also talked to Amy Ke, the girl selling the kites on the boat. Now I promised to advertise the kites to the world (free of charge and I don't get any commission!), so here it goes:
Kite-making from Beijing Amy's family was from Beijing and they have been making these kites (special style from Beijing) for 5 generations. The first and second generations actually made the kitesin the forbiddden cities in the Qing Dynasty. Currently the whole business was headed by Amy's uncle, Mr Wang Chi-feng. The kites were made of silk and they had to be painted 10 times as it was difficult to make the colour stay onto the fabric. |
So check the kites out if you come across them!
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