16. The Chang Jiang

We took a taxi from the hotel at 7AM to a makeshift bus station, which was actually an alleyway at the rear entrance to another hotel. Lots of Chinese and a few foreign tourists boarded the bus with us, and we were seated with Michael from Australia, and Tim and Maria from Denmark. They were recuperating from their own mad taxi ride. Five-foot gave up on Karaoke and was asleep before we departed so he managed to avoid the ensuing driver madness.

The expressway to Chongqing was new and impressive, so the ride could’ve been more relaxing had the bus driver driven at less than 130 kilometres per hour. The bumpy ride freaked all the passengers out as we overtook on tight corners and rode the median barrier constantly. Gasps gripped the air as the bus swung from one side of the road to the other, winding its way through lush green trees in rolling hills and mountains as constant overtaking manoeuvres were undertaken with no consideration of what may be around the bend.

Those of us awake swapped a few stories regarding the treacherous bus rides we had endured in the Middle Kingdom. Michael took the cake with a harrowing journey he had taken through lowland Tibet, the crazy drivers nearly driving off cliffs, evading falling boulders and dumping him in the middle of fallen landslides with instructions to find another ride on the other side of the rocks. The two of us agreed that we had been somewhat desensitised to the driving, although it hadn’t stopped fazing the Danes. We could still tell when a driver was a shocker and the guy at the helm of this bus was a shocker. Thankfully, he was failing to put us into orbit.

We rolled into the especially grey and brown metropolis of Chongqing, on the banks of the Yangtze River at lunchtime, and as we stepped onto the street, the heat was unbelievable. I could feel my skin roasting despite the sun being completely blocked out by the brown sky, and sweat was pouring off me just from standing still.

I couldn’t be bothered walking too far up the hill from where our bus dropped us off, so Five-foot and I let Michael scout out the city on his own. He reported later that a central shopping area was a pleasant experience. Five-foot and I saw a KFC and managed to down a burger before our next adventure, travelling the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River.

The gorges are only around for a limited time now, before they’re forever changed by flooding which is being caused by a hydroelectric dam the Chinese government built further downriver. Once fully flooded, the waters up the Yangtze, or “Chang Jiang” in Chinese, will be raised by up to 175 metres in places, which will flood many cities and homes, displacing millions of people and submerge parts of the gorges plus other historical sights.

The others on the bus to Chongqing were destined for the same boat, and we all spent the afternoon buying provisions for the trip. We met up with Michael, Tim and Maria, and gathered our bags from the cruise tour operator’s office, along with the food we’d bought. Michael was looking for his own plastic bag full of food that contained cheese in particular, but it was nowhere to be found.

“I’ve lost my cheese,” he repeatedly griped while walking to the road where he cornered the tour guide. “I’m not getting on the boat without my cheese.”

“It’s okay,” the guide said, “your bag will be waiting for you.” The guide spent the next few minutes on his mobile phone to another guide at the boat, hopefully tracking down the cheese while we approached the docks. Once alongside the boat, Michael was instantly approached with a bag full of his food, including the cheese. Relief spread across his face and he gave the guide a can of beer and thanked him profusely.

A Chinese tourist had taken the bag and we were sceptical as to whether it was taken by accident, as Michael had placed it under his own pack. It was filled with particularly foreign food like the cheese, which Chinese people don’t usually eat. Michael mentioned he wondered who the thief was. This was a difficult way to begin a three-day voyage.

Boarding the ship, the current of the river was extremely strong, the water extremely brown, and the planks extending to the shore extremely flimsy above the rushing brown surge. It was a decent boat without being fantastic, mainly populated by Chinese tourists with a few foreigners from America, England, a couple from Belgium, and the rest of us from the bus.

Our second-class cabin was small with four beds, and good enough for me, although my standards may have dropped by this time. It could have been very, very crap. A Chinese businessman who constantly smoked and spat, choosing to do so into the rubbish bin by his bed, occupied one of the other bunks. Being relatively irritated by his methods of filling the bin, I figured he couldn’t do these practices in his sleep, so it wouldn’t be much of a problem if I just avoided him during the day.

The afternoon became early evening, and all the passengers stood out on the deck watching the city disappear as the boat departed. Chongqing, with its neon lights surrounded by grey hills and brown buildings seemed like a much nicer place to leave than to arrive in.

As we were standing on deck, I met a teacher who spoke English very well, and he explained he’d been teaching himself the language for twenty years.

“New Zealand is a very beautiful country,” he said.

“Have you been to New Zealand?” I asked.

“No, but I have seen photographs and on television,” he said, and began a very one-sided conversation. “New Zealand was founded in 1840 with the Treaty of Waitangi. There are 3.5 million people living in New Zealand. New Zealand has two islands, the North Island and the South Island. The Prime Minister of New Zealand is Helen Clark, a woman. New Zealand people play rugby and farm sheep.” And he continued.

Michael walked by. He had been adopted by the large, loud family sharing his cabin and was already feeling like one of the crowd in a twelve-bunk lower-class room. He had even been talked into sitting out on the deck with them.

“This is Michael,” I said to the teacher. “He’s from Australia.”

“Australia has 19 million people,” he said, instantly gaining Michaels attention. “The country served as a prison colony for Europe.” And I slipped away, leaving the two new friends to get acquainted while I hid behind Five-foot.

In the darkness, the shoreline with the breaking, foamy waves was barely visible and there wasn’t much else to see. There were no stars due to the grey skies, with Chongqing’s electricity needs probably emitting more pollution into the air in a day than New Zealand could ever hope to avoid producing. The only things I could spot were red lights situated near the shoreline, guidance for the boats along the river.

When we got back to the room, our cabin-mate enquired as to our ages and marital status.

“You should be married if you’re 26,” he said to me. I shook my head and laughed at him. I climbed onto my bunk and pretended to be asleep.

My expectation that our roommate wouldn’t be able to spit in his sleep was proven completely incorrect. He kept waking me up by constantly hoiking up and spitting literally every five minutes or less. The constant barrage of snore-spit-snore-spit kept me awake nearly the whole night.

At 5AM, Muzak was played from the speakers in the rooms and tour guides walked the corridors knocking on doors and calling out to all the passengers to wake us up. They were preparing everyone to visit the town of Fengdu and the Abode of Ghosts Temple on Ming Shan, the hill behind the town. Under demolition, Fengdu was being levelled due to the rising waters leading to its imminent flooding in less than five years. Construction machinery was scattered around the now deformed town and rubble and waste was being separated from the bricks and wood that would be recycled further up or down river.

The people were already selling fruit, toys, and whatever they thought tourists would buy at 6AM in the morning. Leading towards Ming Shan, the road was bordered by a row of shops on each side, standing lonely in the otherwise flattened town. Surrounded by former housing land that was now covered in piles of rubble, these shops were left standing for the moment, like the inverse of a tornado had ripped up the rest of the town and left a strip of buildings untouched. Sooner or later however, those shops would be gone too as the river would inevitably rise.

At the Abode of Ghosts, hundreds of passengers from two different boats grouped together waiting for their tickets to be provided by the respective tour guides. With maybe five hundred people lining up for the cable car, our tour guide was decidedly slack in distributing tickets compared to the others. He didn’t seem to be too concerned about the short time frame and had proven to be pretty slack about herding us into a group too. He was finally handed the tickets at the counter and sauntered back to us like Postman Pat coolly strolling through a crowd with a happy-go-lucky smile on his face, not a care in the world. Meanwhile the other groups had lined up for the cable-car in front of us, tickets in hand so Five-foot, Tim and Maria, myself and a few other foreigners decided to walk up instead.

I had complained constantly about Chinese tour groups, with the megaphones and large groups causing traffic-jams and hold-ups at landmarks, so decided to not be part of one. I ran up the hill before the groups could all get to the top of the cable-car and assert themselves en masse.

By doing so, I gained fifteen precious minutes to myself at the top checking out the temple full of sculptures of demons and other creatures much alike the Bhuddas I had seen in other temples but with a dark, evil twist. There were gargoyle type images, and evil spirit representations and a tall pagoda, which I climbed up so I could have a good vantage point to watch others walk up from the top of the cable car.

I enjoyed a moment of bliss by myself and listened to a woman play a musical instrument designed like a cross between a piano and a harp before the tour groups arrived. I escaped down the hill again, passing my friends still on their way up and found an open gate that hadn’t been opened when I had passed it earlier, so followed the path in.

The “Path of the Dead” was a narrow road leading up the hill, and, at the top of some steps, I was directed into a haunted house by a group of friendly staff. Histories, legends and stories detailed beliefs regarding evil spirits of the surrounding regions all written with English translation. Whether it was true or just tourist planned crap, I didn’t know, but I found it entertaining. I kept walking and found myself at a tourist trap where I was expected to pay for some random photo at the end of the house. Instead of paying, I backtracked through the haunted house and found an emergency exit door.

Outside, I warned an Australian journalism student, Conner, of the tourist trap and after doing so, he chose to join my walk back to the boats. Since the Chinese government was aware he was, in effect, a journalist, he was a little paranoid his emails were being hacked into. The lengths to which the government went to conceal some things I wouldn’t be surprised if they could and would do it.

We chatted about the dangers of buying red meat in China, Conner being vegetarian, and how to avoid getting ripped off. Basically the only way we could think of staying safe was staying at home.

The touts were beginning to pack up, but still trying to sell the crowds whatever they could, letting off fireworks for attention or effect. I bought some bananas for breakfast and bid Conner farewell.

The boat seemed empty between stops as hardly anyone walked around. Chinese people on board sat in their cabins watching television and chatting while the foreigners were more outgoing and could be found on decks watching the sights go by. I was avoiding the Chinese businessman in the cabin, as he hadn’t stopped smoking all day and constantly spat into the rubbish bin. Five-foot could handle the man’s company better than me, but would venture outside every now and then for a break.

Michael found a remote part of the boat down by the engine room where I joined him for a while. The noise of the chugging was deafening but oddly relaxing, as we took in the upriver views. The crew watched us intently but didn’t indicate that we should move on.

The boats stopped at a temple on a small peninsula, which would become an island due to the rising water level. I found the temple pretty boring, being more interested in the marker for where the water was expected to rise. There were many of these white markers along the river, like a row of headstones creeping up the hillside, showing the projected water level of the future. Many homes and farmer’s crops were beneath the top markers. According to the markers, the steps up to the temple’s front gate would soon be gone.

On the way back to the boat, I bought some fried potatoes, paying Y4 for a small container full. Five-foot bought the same amount of spuds for Y1, even though he wasn’t hungry. He only did it to prove a point. He said he didn’t even need to haggle.

When the boat docked at White King Town, night was well and truly upon us. The Belgian couple, Thomas and Bethany, and I went for a walk to another temple up the hill. After dinner the Belgians had seen a bloated human corpse floating down the river, and noted that we, along with every other boat on the river, disobeyed international waterways laws, which stipulate that when finding a dead body, you must contact the authorities and stay with the body until they arrive.

Bethany seemed a little upset having seen the body, while Thomas didn’t seem to offer any emotions about it. It struck me, a while later, that if someone told me about a body floating down a river in New Zealand, I would’ve had a large emotional reaction, like I was connected to it. Here though, I just figured that we were in China and I wasn’t really surprised.

It was great to get off the boat and take a walk up the hill, despite the already dark, raining evening. The temple charged Y55 as an entry fee and I wasn’t that interested, so did an about turn and headed back down the hill to the boat. It was a nice thirty-minute walk regardless. In our cabin, Five-foot was watching Drunken Master Two, a Jackie Chan classic film, and in the businessman’s blessed absence, I joined him.

When our cabin mate arrived at 1AM, waking me from a deep sleep, he nearly drove me to helping him join the bloated corpse down the river. First he went to the toilet and had a shower, both with the door open, then collapsed on his bed and continued with his spitting all night. He topped this off by snoring the entire night.

The Muzak was on again at 5AM, as the boat was passing through the first gorge, Qutang Xia, and Postman Pat strolled up and down the corridor waking everyone up loudly. The morning being pretty dark and misty added to the occasion and made the tall walls of the gorge a sight to behold. It also meant that taking a decent photo was incredibly difficult. Handy cams were out as people flooded the decks for a look and a megaphone was produced by a guide to tell us, in Chinese, about the wonder and awe of what we were looking at. The gorge was soon left behind and I was left practically alone on deck. Most others went back to their rooms for more sleep or to get ready for the day ahead. The major attraction felt like it was over before it had begun and before I could fully wake up.

Five-foot joined me outside again after a while, telling me the businessman had just apologised for his overnight behaviour. He’d been drinking bai jiu all night, a very powerful Chinese alcohol.

The city of Wushan is the base of operations where most people on the tour boats go to see the Little Three Gorges, a trip that I decided to skip due to depleting funds in the bank. Five-foot went, as did most of the other foreigners onboard, while I thought it would be a grand time to catch up on some sleep as our cabin mate had gone along too.

I lay on my bunk and closed my eyes, feeling that wonderful sensation of drifting off to sleep when the door opened. I heard a hoik and a spit and then the flick of a cigarette lighter. Even though I lay on my back my head managed to sink further. Soon enough, snoring and spitting ensued. I had to leave, for the sake of my own sanity.

I took a walk through Wushan, a city with major renovation underway. At river level the buildings were under demolition, like Fengdu, but up the hill brand new empty buildings stood prepared for new residents to arrive. Surrounded by all these unlived in buildings waiting to accommodate the displaced locals from up and down the rising river, I realised the magnitude of the work this government had put in. New roads, shopping centres, and residential buildings: this manufactured infrastructure carried the weight of being a ghost town in reverse. Instead of an abandoned town, Wushan was a major city awaiting people’s arrival.

The stalls at river level were selling all the usual crap stuff like toys and jade carvings. I looked for some home made noodles or some dumplings but there were none on obvious display and I couldn’t read any of the signs. I returned to the boat, and read on deck for a while, awaiting the return of the people who had gone to the little three gorges. The best thing about having so few people around was that the Muzak was turned off. I quietly rejoiced.

Once the passengers had returned and the boat was moving again, the river led immediately to gorge number two, Wu Xia. I really enjoyed travelling through this gorge, thanks in part to the mist and cloud that made the tops of the cliffs rising up from the river difficult to see adding to the mystique. In the middle of these vast isolated canyons were houses and crops with no means of travel to and from other than a boat. Many of these homes and small towns were below the white headstone-like markers showing the future height of the water.

Many of these farmers were expected to move into cities like Wushan and take employment in the factories planned to produce there. Some, however, looked like they were relocating directly up the hill from their current location.

I went for an unofficial tour of the boat that Michael had been on the day before and walked through the kitchen, the engine room, the staff quarters and even sat out the back with the kitchen staff who were fishing off the back of the boat. They saw me walk in and looked disapprovingly, but never told me to leave or barked any orders in Chinese at me. I think they didn’t really care.

Michael had heard that an Australian had walked into the control room of another boat, offered the captain Y100 to drive through the first gorge and duly took the wheel. It wouldn’t be shocking, considering the boat captain’s normal pay was probably a quarter of that per day, or less.

Every foreigner on the boat seemed to have a story about a Chinese cabin mate or family of cabin mates. Michael was starving, having had all his food eaten, including the cheese, by the family in his room. This was the end of an unpleasant rooming experience with the “family from hell”, which included daylong screaming arguments and complete ignorance as he tried to sleep at night. It was in complete contrast to the expectations of the first night on the boat when he thought he was being adopted by a loving, caring group of people. Sophie, another Dane, had similar experiences with a mother and daughter hurricane in her room. It wasn’t all bad news, however, as the Australian who commandeered the other boat had been adopted by a wonderful family who respected his privacy and sleep time and paid for his meals in the dining room as well. This man’s life sounded more and more like a fairy tale to me as Michael spoke about him.

I spent a lot of time with Thomas and Bethany during the day, who were great people to chat to. Thomas was a translator for the European Union and I enjoyed learning a little more about European history and politics. Admittedly the cruise had its boring moments, which could last hours, so it was nice to meet other English speakers.

In the evening, a few of us were sitting inside chatting about our respective roommates and happened to be sitting outside the masseuse’s quarters. We weren’t quite aware of where we were sitting until we noticed that a procession of men continued to walk past us into her waiting room. Five-foot noted we had been stared at quite a bit by passing women as if we were lining up for some action. It was quite funny to us that there was a special masseuse on board a three-day boat. Then again, it did get more than a little boring.

Michael told us about his mission to avoid the English-speaking teacher I had introduced him to on the first night on the boat. According to the Australian, the teacher was definitely a child of the propaganda machine as he could recite sayings and poems of Mao and seemed brainwashed by everything the governments of yester-year wanted him to believe.

“Nobody could write poetry like Chairman Mao,” he had told Michael. “His voice was beautiful, stirring and unique.”

When Michael challenged him with some high school learned Shakespeare, the man was visibly shaken, not sure what to say but denied that it could ever be as profound as Mao.

The boat cruised through the final gorge, Xiling Xia, at night so there was little to see. We spent the evening on the deck with all the foreigners discussing how it would be great finding some privacy from our cabin-mates again. We were all scared of being racist or bigoted, but couldn’t help but think that without the Chinese people we had shared rooms with some of us on the boat would have had a much nicer time. I doubt it was a fact of them being nasty to us, but more culture clash. While I don’t think I did anything to irritate our roommate, he may feel differently.

The boat docked before arriving at the dam to let a few people, including Thomas and Bethany, board buses to the walking tour of the hydroelectric dam. They would meet the boat again on the other side. When the boat continued on, I thought I could see something large and well lit in the distance but not quite clearly a wall of concrete. Apparently the dam is the largest single engineering project ever undertaken in the world and the second largest construction behind the Great Wall. The boats lined up outside the locks, waiting to be lowered to the river level beneath the dam.

We approached as one of a group of eight boats, which all passed through the open first gate, parking in front of the closed second gate in a two hundred metre by thirty-five metre channel surrounded by tall concrete walls. The boats were tied to the walls while the first gates closed and a red light came on to tell us the gate’s water-tight seal was safe. The water began draining out, dropping the water level and thus also the boats, by ten metres. There are measurements on the wall so we could watch this drop take place. This water level drop took less than five minutes although as the water was drained inch by inch to get us to the correct level for the next lock it became more time consuming. An hour after we began moving into the first lock, the second gates opened and we moved into an identical channel, the boats were tied up, gates closed and sealed, red light on, and this time the water dropped by twenty metres in five minutes.

The whole event was breathtaking, being surrounded by light and concrete, and an organisation to a level unheralded, to me, in China. Looking up from the boat, the gates and walls were huge. With both gates closed at either end, towering thirty metres above me, horns blew and lights flashed, then a booming voice loomed over, sounding a warning in Chinese. It felt like I’d paid to become a prisoner in a new, modern concentration camp. It was absolutely fascinating and an engineers dream holiday attraction, I would think.

Lowering the boat to the downriver level included going through five or six locks in total, but it was 2AM after the second lock and I was in desperate need of sleep before disembarking in the morning. Hoping the businessman wasn’t in the cabin, I left the deck, engrossing as this process of lock transport was.

Like so much of this trip, the locks are something to go and experience for oneself. I can't explain the magnitude of the place and my photos don’t do it justice. With the questionable rationality behind the construction of the dam and the sheer size and audacity of the project, this could be another Great Wall type relic in two thousand years. Let’s hope it doesn't crumble quickly, however as, if the dam fails once the waters are fully flooded, the city of Yichang will be gone in an hour and the floods will kill millions more within a day, not to mention the damage it'll do in a week and a month.