Nanjing

April 17, Saturday

Today we sailed into Nanjing, a mid-sized city for China with 5 million people, which was the capital of China for 10 different Imperial Dynasties and also for the Republic of China after the 1911 overthrow of the last Emperor. The captital was moved to Beijing in 1949 when the Communists won the civil war from the Nationalists.

In the morning we had an excursion to the Purple Mountain Park which has the elaborate Mausoleum of  Dr Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the 1911 Revolution. It is a beautiful park: large with extensive landscaping . The Mausoleum is very impressive at the top of a 392 step climb.The park was full of people, foreign tourists and Chinese.

 In the afternoon I left our group as they returned to the boat for lunch and was picked up the family of a a good friend in San Diego.  They took me to a grand lunch in the old part of the city in a private room of a restaurant…..they just kept bringing food- most of which was not identified. Only the 14yo son spoke English and did not know the English names for most of the foods…. He was able to explain to me that I had eaten duck blood soup (after I ate most of it). We also had a dancing girl do some traditional Chinese dances while we ate.

 

 We also visited the Fuzi Temple and shopping/restaurant mall surrounding it….lots of local families were enjoying the fine weather there.   

We also visited the grand  Zhongua Gate in the impressive city wall built during the Ming Dynasty. 

I was brought back to the boat and we set sail for Shanghai late in the afternoon.

Jiuhua Shan

April 16, Friday

Today we were supposed to go to Huangsan...the Yellow Mountain which is famous for its beauty especially in the mists and clouds that swirl around its peaks. However it is a 2 ½ hour drive from the river each way and fog closed down the river for 3 hours in the early morning so the boat had to anchor. Therefore we did not have time to reach the river port and bus to the Mountain. Instead we went to a mountain that is one hour each way from the river port thus saving 3 hours….it is called Jiuhuasan.   
It turned out to be a very good day despite the early disappointment.  Firstly, when the fog lifted it turned out to be a beautiful day with a clear blue sky and temperatures in the mid 60’s.  Secondly, Jiuhuasan is a delightful place, one of the four most important Buddhist mountains in China; there are several temples as well as monasteries and a Buddhist College. We took a funicular to the viewpoint in the midst of the area for beautiful views of the area.

There were many Buddhist monks of all ages as there is a monastery, a Buddhist college and several temples.

Hubei Province

April 15, Thursday

Today, we continued sailing thru the agricultural area with a wide, brown river that had banks that were lined with rows and rows of poplar trees. These were planted to help provide soil stabilization of the river bank so floods and boat waves would not damage the river edge. This is the area of the river that has been most prone to deadly and damaging floods before the Three Gorges Dam Project.

Today we awoke to actual sunshine in the morning with fleeting blue sky and orange reflections on the river as the sun rose in the sky.

We sailed down to the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, which has a population of 8 million people.

The cruise ship is managed very well. We have about 75 passengers on board now for the full trip down river to Shanghai. A group of about 25 departed earlier after we got thru the Three Gorges Dam (Full capacity is about 200). The staff is first class, a combination of experienced western and Chinese individuals in the senior and supervisory positions. There are also a group of young Chinese who are the servers, photographers and housekeeping staff. They are all friendly and efficient and seem to be having a goodtime. They also put on costumes for a couple of after dinner shows:

We stopped in Wuhan for 2 hours and I liked this city as it made a very positive impression. It has wide streets with modern buildings and has an energy about it that is controlled and the people seemed pleasant. It is split into 3 sections by the Han River flowing into the Yangtze from the north: the education section; the industrial section; and the business/financial section. There are 52 universities in the city! The business section has a wide riverside boulevard and park which is lined by trees and European design buildings; this was mainly part of the French and German Concessions of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries similar to the famous Bund in Shanghai.

We spent some time at the Hubei Provincial Museum which houses the artifacts of the tomb of Marquis Yi who was buried 2400 years ago. The tomb was found in 1978. He apparently had everything and everybody he owned buried with him including some huge, heavy iron bells.

Dams

April 14, Wednesday

After passing thru the locks of the Dam Project, this morning after an early breakfast we got on buses to visit the Dam in the daylight. However as you can see from the photos, the clouds and fog gave us limited views. It was also rather cold and windy with temperatures around 50F. The dam is 190 meters high and 2,100 meters across making it one of the largest damns in the world. It generates more hydroelectric power than any other dam on the planet. The other main reason for its construction is to help control the intermittently deadly flooding that takes place on the Yangtze.
Later that day we passed thru the single lock of the Gezhouba Dam that was placed as a test dam downstream from the Three Gorges Project. So I was able to get some photos of the lock function as we lowered 25 meters in 10 minutes.

We then cruised thru relatively flat lands with a wide and shallow river as we entered a rich agricultural area

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The Three Gorges Dam Project

April 13, Tuesday

Today we started our cruise thru the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River. The first of the Gorges is the Qutang, the second is the Wu Gorge, and the third is the Xiling Gorge. They are very beautiful river country and each is beautiful in a different way. The Three Gorges Dam Project has filled to capacity late last year so the Gorges are not as deep as before but are still impressive. Many people have been displaced to new towns that are above the waterline.

Our off-boat excursion this afternoon involved getting into smaller boats to cruise up a Yangtze tributary, the Daning River which has its own gorges…the Lesser Gorges. Then we got into even smaller sampan boats to cruise thru the Mini Gorges of the even smaller Madu River tributary. The tributaries are where the ancient Ba people lived…they are mostly noted for their Hanging Coffins which are placed high above the water level on shear cliffs. We were able to see 2 of them from our small boats….wooden coffins placed in caves.    

 There were other beautiful scenes along the River as we cruised further downstream on the main course:

We arrived at the Three Gorges Dam Project late at nite and received permission from the Navigation Authority to proceed thru the locks at midnite. It took 4 hours to traverse the 5 sets of locks and to descend 90 meters. The groans and squeaks of the boat and the locks and the rushing water in and out of the lock chambers managed to keep quite a few passengers awake. Also thunder and lightning from a passing weather front also added to the nitetime creepiness.

First Day of Yangtze River Cruise

April 12, Monday

Today I boarded the River cruise boat, the Victoria Princess at 9am and the boat left the dock at about 1030 with just less than 120 passengers. The boats in the photo above are not our boat; those are coal barges. Shortly after getting settled we had lunch followed by a talk from the River Guide about the course and flow of the Yangtze River which is the 3^rd longest river in the world.  It flows from its source in the Himalayas across the high Tibetan Plateau and winds its way for 3964 miles through central China before it empties into the East China Sea just north of Shanghai. It has over 700 tributaries. It’s Chinese name is Chiang Jiang which means “long river”. We will cover the length from Chongqing to Shanghai in 7 days.

We cruised away from Chongqing downstream the whole afternoon.  We were delayed getting away from the dock for some reason as the Navigation Authority (The River traffic is monitored like Air Traffic Control to avoid problems going thru the dam locks and to spread out traffic).  After dinner we stopped at the “Ghost City” of Fengdu. It is believed that all souls after death must go to Fengdu to be judged there. There are a series of temples on a hill above the old city of Fengdu, requiring 700 steps unless you take a chairlift which allows live tourists to skip 75% of the steps.  The old city in now under water about 50 meters since the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam is now filled.  On the opposite shore of the river a brand new city has been built housing all the displaced residents.

Here are some photos of the temples up on the hill:

Chongqing

April 11, Sunday

The flight to Chongqing on Air China got delayed for an hour for no definite reason. 

The city proper has about 12 million population while the greater Chongqing district has 33 million. It is at the junction of 2 large rivers… the Yangtze and the JiaLing River and is quite hilly. It was the wartime capital of free China during WWII as the government had to move east during the Japanese invasion from 1937 to 1945. Consequently it was bombed over 250 times by Japanese air forces and almost every building was obliterated. In the past 10 years the central government has made developing the Chinese interior a priority so this area has had great amounts of money flow in. It is known as as the City of fog because it has over 100 foggy days each year, possibly because it lies at the junction of 2 great rivers. Nowadays there is undoubtedly a certain amount of air pollution that adds to that toll. In the late Spring to early Autumn it is known as one of the 4 furnaces of China with temperatures above 100 F and extraordinary humidity. Luckily during my time in the area, temperatures were about 60-65 F but the skies were cloudy and fog was present each morning. Consequently the city is dull looking during the day with modern, high rise apartment and office buildings. But at nite the city comes alive with exuberant lighting decorating most of the buildings. The nite before embarkation on the river cruise, I went with a friend who is a native of Chongqing to a Hot Pot restaurant located in a complex retail development on the cliffs high above the Jialing River. “Hot Pot” is the distinctive Chongqing way of eating with raw foods cooked in tableside pots of boiling oil filled with assorted chiles and spices. And then it is dipped in an assortment of sauces and herbs before being eaten. My friend made sure that I had a pot that was on the low to medium spicy side, so I did not kill myself. His was regular spicy which I tried a few times and was not too bad. 

Here are some photos of nitetime Chongqing:

This is a shopping/restaurant area that was restored on the cliffside above the Jialing river:

A theatre and performing arts center across the river:

The Chongqing Museum:

To China for 2 weeks

April 10, Saturday

Yesterday involved 23 hours of travel from my home in San Diego to my hotel here in Shanghai. I flew to Los Angeles, then flew 12 hours to Tokyo and then 3 hours to Shanghai. Got some sleep at the proper time for my new time zone which is 16 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time. This morning I will fly 2 ½ hours to the city of Chongqing.

I’ll spend 2 nites in Chongqing and get on a 100 passenger riverboat Monday morning and spend 6 days cruising down the Yangtze River back to Shanghai. Then I will spend 5 days in Shanghai before I return home. The river cruise should be a nice way to see some of central interior China as well as the Three Gorges Dam.

Out of China Now

Friday, April 23

I flew from Shanghai to Tokyo airport this morning on my way back to San Diego.  I can now access Blogger to post.
I will try to post my photos and commentary in the next 3-4 days and get it up to date.