Sunday 10th. August
It's 3 o clock in the morning. I look out of the window and see a very high concrete wall, higher than the ship. Is this a nightmare? is our ship being caught in a concrete tub? No we are just passing so called locks. These locks enable a ship to be transferred from a higher portion of a river to a lower portion, vice versa. Living in the Netherlands we had seen these locks (sluices) very often. But with a 5500 ton boat going in a lock together with some 5-6 other smaller boats in the middle of the night and going down some 65 meters in river surface height in four hours time is quite an experience. Immediately I told Grace who was awakened, I would get on deck and take some pictures.

Outside a grizzly rain enveloped the whole scene garily lit by the sodium lights. Unbelievable, I have several times traveled by car using a car ferry. This is the same idea instead of cars it was now boats. Our boat was the largest so far, behind us was a relative small coaster with moaning cows on deck, besides it a smaller (regular) ferry with passengers all on deck looking at the scene. I could see clearly through the open windows the passenger cabins with the stacked beds, four in a room. All the lights were on, you weren't' supposed to sleep and privacy seemed to be a luxury beholden to boats like ours where half of the passengers (mostly foreigners) slept undisturbed through the night. The awakened passengers (mostly local tourists) were now on deck and now all wore their white bathrobes and had an umbrella in their hands and tried to take video's or pictures.

The passing of the locks took some four hours and I think it is quite a feat of navigational skill shoving a 5500 ton ship through a lock without even caressing once the concrete walls or another ship. I was returning to the cabin and the deck several times, trying to get a nap here and there. After several hours a final look at the end of the locks and our boat was parked at the Yangjiawan quay near the three Gorges Dam project. The usual business of coffee or tea at 600 hours and then another highlight, a shore excursion at 6.30 to the project. We went with several buses and passed several surroundings of the project until our buses drove to the highest point of that region and below and around us we could see the project and the locks which we just passed through a few hours before. We were taken to a building with a maquette of the whole project and when we understood everything we came outside again and saw how the mist enveloped everything so quickly right before our eyes.

With good weather and a clear view we would be far more impressed by the magnitude of the project and the sheer size of this biggest building project in the whole world. Imagine that besides the locks there is an elevator for smaller ships up to 1250 tons. These smaller ships would just be lowered or elevated up and down the dam. I have put down some links and information on the project, see below.

We ended the cruise with breakfast and disembarked at the tow of Yinchang. So we finished our downstream cruise. A wonderful cruise indeed. We said goodbye to the crew, thanked them for their satisfying service and took a taxi to the airport. We waited a few hours and flew back to Shanghai in an hour. Boat cruise accomplished and recommendable.

Index page

YangTze the first day

YangTze the second day

YangTze the third day

Links
official web site shipping company
info on boat facilities
Travelogues mr. Yin Shuo

As usual with big projects, there are outspoken opinions for and against. The +(for) or - (against) signs denote the side this particular site is on. The CNN site provides good info and has a QuickTime movie (4.2 Mb) plus other interesting links. Here comes a selection of sites.
Three Gorges Project the Chinese embassy in the US (+)
Three Gorges Project from China Online (+)
Three Gorges Project China.org (+)
Three Gorges Project Yangtze rivercruises.com (+)

Three Gorges Project Yahoo (+/-)
Three Gorges Project CNN (+/-)

Three Gorges Project Probe International (-)
Three Gorges Project IRN (-)