We took a slow book through China down the Yangtze River from Chongqing to Yichang, 3 nights on a boat surrounded by Western tourists. There was a very good reason for this seemingly irrational behaviour: to see the world’s largest dam before it is finished, before it changes the face of the Yangtze and the famed Three Gorges forever.
If you picture a cruise down the world’s third longest river as a beautiful journey through spectacular Chinese countryside, you would only be partially right. Infact, very partially! For much of the time you navigate a slow and filthy watercourse that runs below cities of several million people pumping domestic and industrial waste into the water and their pollution into the air – so much so, the sun fails to break through the smog even in the height of the afternoon (it simply looks like a watery setting sun at 2.00pm).
Pollution is a very real issue in China. The country has 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities, and it shows. Your breath catches in your throat, your nose contents are black, and everywhere has an eerie, misty quality that makes for atmospheric pictures, but which aint doing any good for the atmosphere proper.
Still, on day 2 of our cruise we entered the Three Gorges and the sun broke through onto pretty dramatic scenery. We explored the Shennong Stream in smaller boats and were ‘entertained’ by local songs. Due to the initial filling of the Three Gorges Dam, just down river, the gorges are apparently less spectacular than once they were – the mountains no longer tower a mile above – and much that once was is no more. What do I mean? Well, over a million people that once lived a pastoral existence unchanged for generations along the river have already been relocated, either higher up the mountains or into other areas of China. Their homes are demolished. I’ve read that over 8,000 historical sites will be destroyed. The dam is set to be open fully in 2009 and the Yangtze will rise by another 23 metres.
Why? And how can anyone support this destruction of an amazing landscape, a traditional way of life, and the enforced moving of over a million people? Well, whether it’s the party line or not, you do hear the other side of the story when you actually visit the place.
The Yangtze floods on a fairly regular basis. In the last century, over 100 million people have been affected. Staggering death tolls – like a million people dying in the last century alone – kind of make you see the virtue of damming the beast. Then, there’s power. 1.3 billion Chinese and the alarmingly fast pace of development needs fuelling. It’s surely commendable that China decided to use the Three Gorges Dam to produce the very clean hydroelectric equivalent to 18 nuclear power stations. Then, there’s shipping. The argument goes if you dam the river you can fit bigger container vessels up the Yangtze to head west. Then you’ll bring the development you can see on the east coast, inland. Of course, there is the other side of the story (add to what I wrote above the extinction of the Chinese sturgeon and the Yangtze dolphin, plus the fact the water will slow to a grinding halt, and may turn into what Lonely Planet dubs the world’s largest septic tank). But the Chinese don’t talk much about that.
It isn’t a hasty decision, either. The Party has thought about it long and hard, for 50 years, and the most recent floods in the nineties put the seal on it.
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