A Boat Trip up the Yangtze River

For October holidays, my friend Reshma and I decided to do what the locals do – take a boat trip up the Yangtze River from Yichang to Chongqing to see the famed Three Gorges on a Chinese cruise ship. We arrived in Wuhan, traveled across Hubei Province by bus to Yichang where we met another friend and headed to Changyang, a sleepy little farming town about an hour outside Yichang, for a day of hiking before making it back to Yichang to see the Three Gorges Dam prior to embarking on our river cruise.

Changyang was a pretty little town surrounded by mountains next to a river. We were there for National Day (October 1), one of 3 major holidays in China where residents get the full week off. It felt like the entire town was out on the streets and in the main town square. One of the things we noticed right away was the profusion of shoe stores (I just don’t see how this small town can support this many shoe stores), clothing stores and babies. Out in the countryside, the one-child policy is less stringently enforced, and we saw babies everywhere. Many people carried them in baskets on their back. The babies in China don’t use diapers – instead, they were pants with a split crotch and parents literally hold them over trash cans and street corners whenever nature calls. A bit unsettling to see when you are walking down the street. This happens everywhere, not just in Changyang.

In Yichang, we visited the Three Gorges Dam – the biggest dam in the world. The massive dam was built to supply energy to an increasingly power-hungry country. The local people were very proud of it. The project has been going on since the late 1990s and will finally be completed in 2009. It has displaced over 1 million families (many of them not properly compensated) and when completed, the rising waters from the dam will flood many cultural sites, including filling in parts of the Three Gorges. The dam contained a 5-layer ship lock and a massive wall that spans the river. It is quite a tourist spectacle, with buses hauling thousands of people there daily to several designated viewing sites to see the monstrosity. The scale of the whole project is really quite impressive. However, there are concerns that shoddy work went into it and that the damming of the river will cause serious environmental degradation.

Our Chinese cruise is definitely not for the faint of heart. Reshma and I were the only foreigners on the boat. Even though the 2 of us were in a first class cabin – it was small and very basic. In some of the cabins, we saw 6 beds cramped into the same space as our room, which is crazy. The Chinese were loud, they smoked incessantly, and they were aggressive and pushy (and unapologetic about it). But the views of the Gorges were beautiful (reminds me a bit of Halong Bay, but not as impressive) and it has been interesting seeing what a typical, mid-upper class Chinese family vacation is like.

At Shennonxia, we took a smaller boat up the Shennon River where we saw the rock formations up close. We also got to take small wooden boats rowed by the local “boat trackers.” Before we left, the guide had been explaining in Chinese that we would get the opportunity to see the local way of life there, but because of my imperfect Chinese, all I could understand was that we would see people doing something and we ladies don’t need to worry about our sensibilities since they won’t be doing it naked as they used to do it because of tourism in the area. It turned out that he was talking about the boat trackers – now they row and pull boats in underwear or shorts as opposed to in the buff, but there were pictures of them doing it naked all over the place (they show their naked behinds). We also got to see a performance where someone juggled knives and meat cleavers, something they do in the area. It was fun to watch – definitely a “do not try this at home” type of performance.

We stopped by the White Emperor Town in the evening. Perched on a cliff overlooking the waters, the temple at the top could only be accessed by a set of stairs with hundreds of steps. As a result, there were locals who carried people in these seats attached to bamboo poles all the way up to the top. The temple commemorates an event detailed in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which I feel like I should read. Neither Reshma nor I had read the novel and we know almost nothing about Chinese history so while it was a pretty stop, we really could not understand the historical significance of the site.

On the second day of the cruise, we stopped at Ghost City near the town of Fengdu in Chongqing Province. It was definitely my favorite stop. Numerous temples have been built atop a hill with sculptures of demons and ghosts since the Tang Dynasty. We walked down Ghost Street, which, according to legends, is a bazaar for the nether world. It is dotted with some altars and temples, as well as a bunch of little shops selling Halloween-style masks. It felt sort of like a Chinese version of Salem, MA. A bunch of demon sculptures lined both sides of the path up to the Ghost Palace, which for some reason we couldn’t get into.

However, we were able to go up the other side of the hill to the temples that lined the hillside. We climbed up over 400 steps to get to the base of the temples, passing by the Thanks Giving Temple, to reach the Temple of Light. More steps led us up past yet more temples to the very top to the hill where the Palace of Heaven (the path was also lined with sculptures of demons) was located. The climb up was really pretty with views of Fengdu across the river and the fauna-covered hills surrounding the temples. I guess all the creepy temples with names such as Palace of the King of Hell were in the other area, inside Ghost Palace.

I couldn’t quite understand whether the local people believed it was a place representing hell. Despite all the demon and ghost sculptures, you’re supposed to light incense for peace and serenity. Either way, Reshma and I definitely had a great time there.

We arrived in Chongqing City, at the crack of dawn yesterday. Chongqing is built on a bunch of steep hills overlooking the Jialing River and the Yangtze River. The two rivers meet at Chaotianmen dock, which is built to look like a ship (and it really does!), where we disembarked. As a result of the hills, there are almost no bikes in this city. The streets looped up and down the hilly slopes, making navigating the city difficult even with a map. Some roads are so steep that some of the cars had trouble going up. The weather there was also really hot – over 90 degrees even though it’s October. The weather during the summer often exceeds 100 degrees, earning it a place among China’s 3 furnaces, alongside Wuhan and Nanjing (2 cities I’ve stopped through but have not visited).

After we dropped off our bags at the hotel, we decided to join a tour to what we thought were the Dazu Caves, a set of Buddhist Grotto Caves about 2 hours outside Chongqing. Instead, we found ourselves going to random stops around the city, including the Ciqikuo Ancient Town and the Huguang Immigration Museum. Although I asked several times if we were going to the caves, the answer was always yes. Turns out that my Mandarin Chinese failed me badly – we ended up at the Zhazi Caves (in my own defense – Dazu Caves and Zhazi Cave sound really similar, especially when people speak with such different accents!), a former coal mine turned prison during the Kuomingtang (KMT) rule in the 1940s. So instead of taking Reshma to see caves filled with Buddhist murals and sculptures (a World Heritage site), we ended up touring a couple of notorious prisons. The second prison, Baigongguan, used to be a former villa that U.S. diplomats stayed at during visits to China. Both were located up in the mountains surrounding the city. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to visit Dazu Caves today since we had to return to Beijing.

I definitely join tour groups in China with a bit of apprehension since they usually involve a lot of random shopping stops and very little time at the actual sights. This one was no different. The tours are sometimes unavoidable since it is difficult to get to some of the tourist sites otherwise. Getting to Dazu Caves requires taking a bus to Dazu County and then another bus to the caves. We thought a tour would make it easier to get there. But in the end, we got stuck touring the production site for spices that went into Chongqing’s famous hotpots, which ended at the company’s store, and watching a knife demonstration (a live infomercial) at their Olympic center (I think it’s actually just a stadium since I don’t think any Olympic events will be taking place here).

But the day ended well nonetheless. We walked around downtown Chongqing, visited their Liberation Monument, found the Arhat Temple (which we could not go into since it was closed by that time of the night), took a cable ride over the Yangtze to the south side of the city and had a really yummy dinner right by the river. The views from the cable car station, which is on top of a hill, and from the cable car as we were crossing the river were both really neat. We got a bird’s eye view of some old sections of the city (though much of the old buildings are being knocked down for new high-rises along the river). When it got dark, the city was lit up by neon lights. There were lights on buildings and even lights along the bridges and highways. It was rather Vegas-like but fun.

We spent most of the day back at Ciqikuo Ancient Town. We got chops made with our names in ancient Chinese, sampled a bunch of Chongqing snacks, browsed through some local arts and craft, bought some souvenirs, visited the Bao Lun Temple and learned about the history of ceramics in Ciqikuo (the name means ceramics). The views from the temple were really pretty since we were so high up.

Now, I’m back in Beijing after spending 3 weeks on the road. Will upload more pictures from my trip to Picasa.