The Yangtse is Dammed Gorges

After waking up at 6:30 last saturday, we got on the four hour bus from Chengdu to Chongqing (pronounced "chong ching"), the starting point for a trip down the Yangtse as well as the world's largest city. Our bus ride ended up taking about 6 hours because we had to wait for a giant fog to clear on one of the highways before we could keep going, but we eventually made it to Chongqing some time in the afternoon. Chongqing is a weird, bizarre, interesting city. It has a population of over 30 million people, and the infrastructure looks like a combination of Orwell's 1984, Gotham City, and LA. Giant, concrete suspended roads running everywhere, millions of people, giant steaming pots of food cooking on the street, and every kind of traffic rushing at you in every direction, I could imagine it being really overwhelming if it was the first city I came to in China... it still kind of was.

We got on our boat about 7 that night, and I guess we really got what we paid for with about $150 for four days on this domestic Chinese "river cruise". It was many things - fun, informative, etc. - but it was not comfortable. First of all, there was no heat on the boat (in the middle of the winter on a river), and our room had a hole in the wall that consistently let in air from the outside. Also, the bed was, I think, made of crumpled aluminum or something like that, and they only gave us a small blanket and duvet. The room smelled like nothing i've ever smelled before - I can't even describe it; I can only say it was nauseating. The "shower" promised to us had no hot water (in our sub-zero room), and the floor of the bathroom had a puddle of fetid water that we were careful to not touch the whole time. The boat food consisted of cup of noodles, and a big piece of Cheddar cheese we brought with us.

That being said - the trip was really entertaining. First of all, we got to see the three gorges dam and it's namesake - the three gorges, which were gorgeous. We were woken up every morning at like 6:30 by the screaming, fake-eyebrowed, boat-master, who had us got off at sights along the way, or had us look at whichever gorge we happened to be passing through at that time. The scenery really was awesome, and made us forget about the horrible living conditions. The yangtse mist is really beautiful, and we were surrounded always by huge mountains and peaks with the typical Chinese angle to them, not to mention the gorges that just envelope you as you go through them. They are sort of like the Grand canyon (not quite the same scale), but are clearly chinese, which is a cool asthetic. Also, we got to tour the Dam, which, aside from all the controversey, is really, really, REALLY big. That's all i can say about it. It's just massive, over 2 km long. It's funny though, as you cruise the river, there are signs on the bank everywhere that say "175 M" at a certain point, and houses and anything below them will be swallowed up by the dam's backed up water.

We got into Wuhan last night - the capital of Hubei province - after a four hour bus ride from Yichang, where our boat dropped us off. Got in, had the first shower in four days, and went to sleep like a little baby, after not really sleeping at all for four days either. One thing I will note - all the Chinese people on the cruise had no problem dealing with the no warmth, no shower, stinky conditions - we really need to toughen up. More to come... zai jian!