Chongqing, China and River Cruise on the Yangtze River

On arriving in Chongqing, we met our guide and went to the zoo to see the giant pandas. It was lunchtime, so we were able to see several of the precious and childlike animals up and eating. They eat (bamboo leaves) and sleep, eat and sleep. My picture count keeps going up and up, and I do have lots of panda pictures, they are that irresistible. We also saw some absolutely beautiful gold fish and a couple of China tigers. After touring the city, we boarded the Yangzi Explorer for a three day ride through the Three Gorges region to the largest hydroelectric dam in the world.  Taking 40,000 workers over ten years and spanning 1.3 miles it is the largest civil construction project to date.  It provides only 1% of China's massive electrical requirement.  More importantly, it controls flooding on the massive river and dramatically improves shipping.  Prior to that shipping upstream was through some class 4 rapids and the boats were pulled by porters, who worked naked and wore long grooves in the stone wall as their ropes came around corners.  During the building 1.3 million people were relocated, most to new cities above the high water mark.  The water level is managed up and down 30 meters (90+ feet) to accommodate the summer floods coming from the melting snows in the Himalayas.  The scale of this project is almost impossible to understand.  As mentioned before, relocation is a common event here as no person is allowed to own land and only rents it from the government, so when they want to use your land, they do.

Our first day out we stopped in Fengdu, a relocation village where the Chinese built a community for farmers whose homes were taken when the dam was built. We visited the home of a relocated family, a market, and a nursery school where the children were at recess, and we played games with them and listened to their songs. The next day we cruised through the Qutang Gorge and the Wu Gorge before disembarking and transferring to sampans powered by the Tujia boatmen. That night we went through five docks that lowered us about 30 meters each time,  one lock greater than the elevation on the Panama canal system, a process that took three hours. When the water is low the first lock is unnecessary.  It was eerily exciting to stand on deck and see and feel the boat drop.