Day 19 - Sunday, Nov. 3 - Xian to Yangtze

The Yangtze at Yichang

We leave for the airport, armed with breakfast bags, headed for Yichang, which means “convenient prosperity”.  That name is as confusing as the instructions aboard our Fuzhou Airlines Boeing:  “Oxygen masks will fall off automatically in emergencies”.  (I sincerely hope not!)  Or the equally amusing “Pregnant wo man’s seat belts is tied under her bloated abdomen.”
       We fly over one row of hills after another, stretching to the horizon, then over the plain, with sun shining off the Yangtze River, the world’s third longest river after the Nile and the Amazon.
       From the airport, it’s all downhill (literally) into Yichang.  Daniel, our local guide, gives us tidbits of information.  The city’s population:  a mere 1.3 million, its growth spurt largely thanks to the recent building of the Three Gorges Dam.  The dam created a lot of pro vs con discussion -  modernization vs flooding archaeological sites - and how to relocate over a million people.  To get past the dam, there are five locks in a step formation, and waiting time for passage can be long, so now only cargo ships use them; passenger ships run only from Yichang to Chongqing (previously spelled Chungking) and back. And that’s what we’ll do:  sail upstream 473 km (almost 300 miles) to Chongqing.  It will take four days, with side trips.

The Tower Pagoda

       Like Hong Kong and Shanghai, Yichang was a British concession in the late 1800's, and was the farthest the Japanese got during World War II.  Now the dam has made it famous again.  The region is known for its fruit; it produces 5% of all China’s oranges and is the birthplace of the kiwi, which locals call “monkey peaches” because the skin looks like monkey fur.
       Daniel also teaches us some quips about his country, such as “China’s national bird is the construction crane” and the modern term for high-rises:  Chinese concrete bamboo shoots.
       As we can’t board our river cruise ship until 3 p.m., we walk along the banks of the river for a while.  There’s an octagonal pagoda - the Tower Pagoda - with seven statues, only one of which still has its head.  Shades of the French Revolution and Parisians knocking the heads off all the statues of the saints on Notre-Dame’s façade, believing them to be nobles.

Bungee jumping

       We have lunch in a restaurant high up one of the deep
gorges (thus the name of the dam), where food is traditional and English isn’t spoken.  We can watch out the window as people bungee jump off the opposite cliffside of the gorge.*  If only I’d known before I ate!  (Just kidding.)
       After a pit stop at a resort hotel owned by the town council and where President Xi recently came to pee (it rhymes, and it’s true... a bit of their glory), we pass the dam and arrive at our ship, the Sanctuary Yangtze Explorer.  Free time until dinner, which is more refined, with courses instead of the lazy susan in mid-table, but every bit as scrumptious.
       Then it’s the mandatory life jacket demonstration and an optional documentary on China’s Seven Wonders, some of which are wondrous and some of which we’ve already seen:  the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the terra cotta warriors and the Yangtze River, where my bed awaits in my cabin.

* Look closely at the photo.  There's someone hanging at the end of the bungee cord, at the very bottom, just a few feet off the river's surface.

The Yangtze, home for four days