Day 21 - Tuesday, Nov. 5 - Yangtze River

It’s much quieter on the river, and will be even later in our new port of Badong, away from all those other boats.  Unlike the past two nights, I sleep so well I almost miss 7 a.m. tai chi.  This time it’s taught by the male doctor, a yang to yesterday’s yin.  He doesn’t speak English so it’s harder to follow him, especially with the pivots that mean I sometimes have my back to him.
       Right after breakfast, there’s an excursion Stanley has told us not to miss, an uncharacteristic order from him.  I wouldn’t have missed it anyway.  We’re off on a side-trip up the Shennong Stream opposite Badong... more like a narrow river than a stream.

Shennong Stream

Rowers jump off and pull the boat from a high path

The ferry takes us from our ship up the Shennong - a tributary of the Yangtze which originates in central China - to a point where we transfer to a sampan, called a “pea pod” boat because it’s shaped like a pea’s pod.  With three rowers in the bow and one in the stern (in addition to the helmsman), we scoot along between the sharp mountains of the gorge.  Before the new Three Gorges Dam raised the water level everywhere upstream, it was very narrow, full of rapids and too shallow for anything but these sampans.  And even back then, there were places so narrow that rowing was impossible and the boats had to be pulled upstream by manpower.  To demonstrate what that was like, two of the front rowers hop off at one point and scamper like mountain goats up a slope to pull us with long ropes from paths high above.

Rower and helmsman

       Our guide Amy is a Tujia, one of China’s native minorities.  She tells us about the Tujia:  that they have no written language; that, as a minority, even under the one child program, they were allowed to have two children; that they bury their dead, not cremate them (which is more or less the law in China).  She teaches us some words in her language.  “I love you” is close to the English - pronounced  ah lee oo - and is signed with thumb, index and pinkie raised from a closed fist.  “Bye bye” is pronounced yah nah.  She also tells us of a salamander they don’t eat because the noise it makes sounds like a crying baby; they call it wawa oo - wawa for child and oo for fish.

Village shop

       We pass Swallow Gorge and its appropriately named cave, where hundreds of the birds nest, followed by Parrot Gorge named for the shape of its mountain crest.  On Bamboo Gorge grows soft bamboo, the kind eaten by pandas and used to make rice paper for artwork.  There are also bridges, a tall one opened in 2014 (the only one in this area) and an even taller one still under construction for a future high-speed railroad line that will connect Chongqing to Beijing in only four hours as of 2022.
       One last story Amy tells is of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet visiting the region together in 1995 and meeting with one of the boatmen.  When Gates and Buffet returned to Beijing in 2010, they flew the boatman to the capital to see him again.  A photo from 1995 is on the wall in the village’s grocery store, run by the nephew of our stern boatman, whose house we also visit... but the boatman himself is still walking back from the place where our sampan moored.  (The oldest of the boatmen is 89!)  This village was rebuilt higher up when the Three Gorges Dam submerged their original one.  The houses are simple: a big room, a kitchen, one or two bedrooms, storage for tools and crops (many sweet potatoes in baskets).

The new village

We say yah nah to Amy and all the others when the ferry returns us to the ship and we sail into the 45-km long Wu Gorge.  Since the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, the river is now three times wider than it was and twice as deep.  Peaks rise on both sides:   Pine Top, Goddess Pi and finally The Gateway to Heaven.  These gorges provided protection from the Japanese in World War II.

Hanging coffin (middle of rift)

       After the Gorge lies the huge city of Wushan, and then miles and miles of orange orchards.  Just before nightfall, we reach the much shorter Qutang Gorge.  At one point upstream, one tributary (the Meixi, I think) seems even larger than the Yangtze!  The ridges here are sharper, seem more wild.  This was once ocean floor, long ago, before being thrust up, so the rock is mostly sedimentary.  In one of the crevices, guide Willy points out a hanging coffin,  a coffin placed on a beam jutting out from a cliff in order to prevent bodies from being taken by beasts.  On an island is Waikin Temple.  Along the river are kilometer signs marking the distance from Three Gorges Dam; we’ve come 200 km (125 miles) so far.  It’s 300 km (186 mi) total from Badong to Fuling, our final port just outside Chongking, so we’ll be sailing until tomorrow.

Back on the ship, it’s another delicious, I’ve-eaten-too-much dinner.  On the way to my cabin, the lovely young girl behind the desk is saddened that I’m not going to the Crew Show.  So I relent.  Evidently one thing that helps get you hired on this ship is knowing how to sing and/or dance.  There are several acts, starting with the Warrior Drummers.  Five huge drums for five warriors.  That wakes me up enough for the Maiden’s Dance, a vocal male solo and then... I forget.  It’s time for bed.