The Three Gorges

We first visited the Yangtze River up in the mountains of northwestern Yunnan, where it ran thick gray from sand and silt, like glacial melt. We hiked along the river as it crashed through the Tiger Leaping gorge, cutting a swath through mountains 15,000 feet high. Further upstream, the Yangtze ran within 30 miles of the Mekong River. These two rivers diverge by thousands of miles before reaching their destinations. If the Yangtze, so critical to Chinese civilization, hadn't been able to cut through, it too might head south to Indochina and arguably the history of China would be very different.

We joined the Yangtze again in Chonquin. Here it already resembles a tame industrial river. It is wide and flat, full of traffic. But that would be misleading. The current is swift and the power of the water is still clear. The Yangtze River periodically floods huge areas of China downstream, taking thousands of lives and wrecking billions of dollars of damage. The floods also nourish the most fertile lands of China, helping successfully feed 1.2 billion people. The Chinese have dreamed for decades of damming the river to stop the floods, and now the dam is being built. Heralded by the Chinese as a symbol of development, the dam is also a poster child for environmentalists about ecological destruction. The dam will create the largest reservoir in the world.

The area to be flooded includes The Three Gorges, where the Yangtze pierces through the last hills/mountains before the long journey across flat western China. This has always been somewhat of a tourist area, but since the reservoir will obliterate the gorges by 2009, it is now a very popular destination for sightseers eager to get a glimpse before it is gone.