Words Fail Me

Overlooking a pontoon bridge out into the Yangtze while the sun sets behind the mountains.  Terrible photo.  Why did I even save it?  I suck.

We docked just upriver from the Kuimen Gate.

Baidicheng — the White Emperor City, famous since the Three Kingdoms period — was originally on a peninsula until the higher water level made it an island.

The third of the Three Gorges — and the most impressive — is the Qutang Gorge.
  
  Yet more Tujia hanging coffins.
  
  
Looking back at the (redudantly named) Kuimen Gate…
…a picture of which can be seen on the back of China’s ten Renminbi note. 

A bridge across Yangtze.  The scales involved here are difficult to communicate.

We sailed through the second of the Three Gorges:  the Wu Gorge.
  
This mountaintop is known as the Goddess Peak.  
  
  

We set sail up the Yangtze.  I stood on my lonely balcony with the wind blowing and row after row of mountains receding into the distance, sailing into a real life shanshui painting.

Looking down at the locks along side of the Three Gorges Dam.  There are usually two “lanes” of locks, one for upstream and one for downstream.However, one lane was dry for regular maintenance.
There are usually five locks, but when the water behind the dam is at its lowest level only four are needed.
Watching this long ship making its way up the locks, I couldn’t help but think of how impressed Teddy Roosevelt would have been if he had had the chance to see them.

Sometimes the scale of things in China is astonishing.  Like the stuff of science fiction.  The Three Gorges Dam is one such example.

32 hydroelectric turbines, a series of five locks, plus an elevator which can lift a boat in nine minutes.All together, the thing looks like the fucking Death Star.This huge pyramid is an example of what was sunk at the bottom of the Yangtze. 
I found this statue representing the river itself rather grotesque.  The red and white line across this painting represents where the bridge stands now, across the Xiling Gorge (the first of the Three Gorges.)  An epic panorama of the nearby mountains.  The back of the dam, receding into the mist.
Although not the tallest or widest dam in the world, building of the dam was the single biggest dam project in history.  The ostensible goals were threefold:

1. Power generation
2. Improved navigation
3. Flood control

However, because of the rising water levels behind the dam, 1.3 million people had to be relocated to higher ground and countless ancient Chinese sites were flooded.

It’s interesting to note that Dr. Sun Yat-sen who first suggested building a dam across the Yangtze back in 1919.

This cruise through the Three Gorges was the gift I gave myself for completing my ODW tour of duty.  I bought out one of the ship’s two spacious “Shangri-La Suites.”
A bathtub on a ship?  Decadent!  (I didn’t use it.  Felt too guilty.)  
Awww.  Origami towels in the shape of kissing swans?  Romantic!  (I pretended to wring their necks.)The room came with a decent bottle of French wine, too.But the real reason I splurged on the Shangri-La Suite was the private balcony that faced forward off the bow of the ship.

The winter cruise terminal felt like a location in a John Carpenter movie.

The Victoria Anna holds around 300 guests, considerably smaller than the cruise ships I went on with my grandmother and the Youngs when I was a teenager.