the slow boat through china

There seem to be so many pop culture references to do with China that I am cashing in on here, but altering the title of “Slow Boat to China” slightly really does paint a picture of our cruise down the Yangtze River, from Chóngqìng to Yichang.

The main reason for the cruise was to go through the Three Gorges Dam, which from early next year will mean that parts of the river will be flooded as part of the Dam project. The social impact of the project is quite extensive and the various responses that we received from our Chinese tour guides were quite different to what we had read about and watched on television.

On Monday morning Matt, Nick, Ruth, Anna, Helena, Alex and I all flew to Chóngqìng. We weren’t due to start boarding the boat until 5pm but because we arrived at around 1pm and our bus driver who had met us at the airport was reluctant to take us sightseeing at all in Chóngqìng, we managed to check into our rooms earlier and then have a wander around the city.

We were told that Chóngqìng was a smaller city in China, having a population of only around 4.1 million people living in the urban city area. From our standards Chóngqìng was very densely populated.

As some of you may know, I have been known on occasion to be a little bit accident prone. As I was getting into the cable car in Chóngqìng I had the unfortunate experience of cracking my head on the top of the cable car. From then on, the rest of our group were very considerate in reminding me to “Mind my head”, with cries of “Lauren, watch your head” or “Hey, that cushion taped to the door frame’s for Lauren”.

Our mission, which we chose to accept, was to find a supermarket so that we could buy some snacks for the boat. We were to get three meals a day on the boat, but with the kids and Matt we thought that we would need to have some between meals nourishment. Finding the supermarket however proved to be more difficult than originally anticipated as while we had a map, street signs in China don’t always exist and sometimes when they do they are only characters. We did manage to find it eventually and it was a super-mega mall with everything and anything (I got some sunglasses!).

After eating some pizza at a restaurant called Pizza Amalfi (slightly different to pizza in Amalfi), we headed back to our boat to begin our river adventure.

7.30am Tuesday morning we were gentled roused for early bird coffee by soft music filtering through the PA system. Originally I thought that I was going insane when I woke up to the music, but thank goodness other people could hear it as well.

As we sat eating breakfast and waiting for the last few people to join us, we were first introduced to what would become our major gripe throughout the cruise.

The lack of buffet etiquette.

It was baffling to me - how could a queue for the buffet take about as long as traffic along the South Eastern freeway at 5.30pm on Fridays?

And it wasn’t until lunchtime on Wednesday that the reason became apparent to me.

Instead of picky kids - in this case it was picky adults.

Now generally in a buffet queue, you grab your plate and go - you don’t analyse each item of food, you either take it or not and deal with the consequences at the table. It seems that a number of people on the cruise had never experienced a Holland family Christmas lunch and were picking up each food group with the tongs, turning is around and over, smelling it briefly and then maybe putting it on their plate. It got really tiresome really quickly.

By 10am we were off, cruising down the Yangtze.

Our first stop was the Ghost City, Fengdu. According to superstition “the dead come to Fengdu and the devils go to hell”. There have been a number of temples built in Fengdu as well as the “Door to Hell”, complete with a entourage of demons paving the way.

With the Three Gorges Dam Project part of the ghost town will be submerged, but the temples towards the top of the mountain will remain.

We were told by our tour guide that there were 700 steps to the top, but that there was a chair lift that could take you up for 15RMB return. But as we don’t believe in chair lifts, we opted for the steps and beat most of our group up the mountain. Alex was a little annoyed as there was only 647 steps - yes, he did actually count them.

It was a mixture of amazing and somewhat creepy at the top of the mountain. At one point, at the side of top temple there was what I can only describe as the Myer Windows for the deranged. Graphic scenes of tortune filled the walls, I was so disturbed by it that I didn’t take any photos. You’ll just have to take my word for it when I say it was scary, spooky stuff.

The next day Matt and I decided to fight the urge to sleep in and get up with the birds to attend a non-compulsory excursion to Baidi City (City of the White Emperor). Baidi City is in the Fengjie County, where most of the old town has been submerged by the building of the dam. Some of the site that we saw will be under water by this time next year.

It was a beautiful morning and a beautiful site to visit.

It is also at the start of the first Gorge - the Qutang Gorge.

In the afternoon, after passing through the first gorge, we were all shuffled onto another, smaller boat to travel through the Three Little Gorges on the Madu River. The weather was wonderful as we sat on the floor at the front of the boat and passed through the Three Little Gorges. Unfortunately we had a large amount of people standing in front of us, watching and getting incredibly sunburnt as we cruised passed.

It wasn’t until Anna suggested that we play a game that involved lots of hand slapping when someone got the wrong answer and large amounts of laughter when someone got the answer wrong, that we realised we could have cleared out the people standing in front of us and blocking our view if only we’d decided to play annoying, noisy games earlier in the cruise. The return trip was so much better as we could see everything around us, including the coffins in the cliff faces.

(Picture sidenote: look how pale we are, paler than most people)

Once back on our big boat we passed through the second Gorge - the Wuxia Gorge. By this stage we were a little over seeing Gorges (Gorge-ous), so we had a coffee in our room and relaxed before heading down for cheap cocktails and a game of Old Maid (poor Helena just kept being left with the Old Maid card).

Our last evening on the boat consisted of an impressive dinner and then drinking some good, not-so-old Australian red on the back of the boat. There was a talent show that Anna and Helena pretended not to be interested in as they sat at the back of the room and read their books, but Ruth, Nick, Matt and I enjoyed the balmy night as we waited to reach the Dam and witness the boat going through the locks.

We had to wait a little longer than expected because we missed our slot in the queue, but once we were actually in the lock and the water was being lowered, it was quite an experience.

Visiting the Dam the next day was even more amazing. We kept being told that it was the largest Dam in the world (as well as how much higher the water still had to rise and when the water was going to rise, even though people continued to ask those exact questions - this became another running gag on the trip!) but it wasn’t until I actually saw the Dam in the daylight that I actually believed this statement.

The Dam seemed to continue on forever and with the haze, my photos seemed to give that impression even more.

And there were so many people visiting the site. Thousands of people taking photos of the site and it was so warm that day that Matt and I found a tiny piece of shade and sat, overlooking all the people and wondering how many photos of the Dam could one person possibly take.

Back on the boat for the final two hours and by this stage we were all a bit tired of being on the boat and a lot tired of some of the people who had been on the cruise with us.

The final Gorge (the Xiling Gorge) passed us by without too much angst and the next thing we knew we were docking at Yichang.

We had someone meet us at the boat and take us to his minibus, but unfortunately Ruth had opted to not get the English speaking tour guide and what followed was definitely one of the more bizarre comedy of events we had while in China.

Our plane from Yichang to Shanghai wasn’t until 4.30pm and as we had docked at around midday it was thought that grabbing some food before heading to the airport could potentially be a good thing. Who really wants to eat lunch an an airport when they don’t have to and even more importantly, who wants to assume that there will be somewhere to eat at the airport?

But, trying to communicate this to our bus driver proved to be a little difficult. And it wasn’t until he stopped the bus on the side of the road, got out and jumped on behind a motor biker and headed down the road, away from us that we realised that maybe he’d had enough and decided to let us fend for ourselves.

Thankfully no, he returned on the back of the motorbike with a girl behind him. A girl who spoke English.

Relief ensured.

And an amazing lunch shortly followed (with waaaaaay too much food) before heading off to the airport to wait for our plane to Shanghai.

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