China Diary -- Part 30 Wuhan

In Wuhan we visited the Hubai Provincial Museum, a magnificent, world-class collection that features artifacts from the Tomb of Zenghouyi [Marquis Yi -- a fifth-century BC imperial official]. It is a magnificent assemblage of weapons, bronzes, ceramics, and lacquers -- one of the great treasures of the world. Here are a couple of examples:




The highlight of the exhibit, at least for me, was a collection of musical instruments including this magnificent bronze bell assemblage.


The museum also contained a fascinating anthropological display.


China is quite proud that several early hominins have been discovered there, and the state is pushing hard on an "out of Asia" theory of human origins. Several of the displays were of fossils purported to show anatomical continuities between early and modern Asian populations.

I like museums and was enchanted by the exhibits, but apparently not everyone was as taken by the experience as was I.


We couldn't linger because we were scheduled to attend a concert in which musicians played instruments modeled on the ones we had just seen in the exhibits, so we assembled and walked over to the concert hall.

When we arrived an earlier show was just letting out. Here are a few of the actors. I don't know just what they represent, but they certainly are striking.


Here's the show we saw.



Interesting, but I would have preferred a little more time with the exhibits.

China Diary -- Part 29 Jingzhou to Wuhan

We went ashore at Jingzhou and boarded buses for the trip to Wuhan, the capital of Hubai province.



There seemed to be an inordinately large number of people spending their days staring at the surface of the river, but considering the early retirement age and the poverty of many retired people in China that's to be expected.

Our journey took us through some of the most fertile lands in China and the peasantry are reputed to be the most prosperous in the country -- living in two- and sometimes three-storey homes that, we were told, are magnificently decorated on the inside.


That may be, but there were still plenty of people living in ramshackle accommodations such as these.


And while we saw some evidence of mechanized farming....


Most of the farmers we saw made do with far more traditional methods.


Somehow it was refreshing to be traveling across semi-dry land after several days on the river. The procession of rice paddies, lotus pools, and fish ponds however soon became a bit boring, so I dozed off and didn't waken again until my wife poked me to tell me that we were pulling into Wuhan.

China Diary -- Part 28 The Dams

The next morning found us docked at Sandouping. We went ashore again, this time to visit China's largest civil engineering project and the largest water control project in the world -- the Three Gorges Dam. As was so often the case on the Yangtze, a dense fog settled over the river, obscuring objects and structures on the far bank.


The dam is huge -- four times larger than Hoover [Boulder] Dam.


Like governments everywhere the state took great pains to emphasize time and again how the Three Gorges Dam exemplified the wonderful things that the rulers were doing for the people, and, this being China, the point was made over and over that this was bigger and better than anything else in the world. This kind of overt boosterism reminded me of the kind of bragging competition that the United States and France engaged in a century ago, or the absurd claims advanced by Soviet authorities in the mid-twentieth century or Texas braggadocio of the same period. It's harmless, of course, and amusing, but it betrays a certain strain of status anxiety in the national culture.

Back on the boat we continued down the river toward the Gezhou Dam, affording me the opportunity to take pictures of life along the river.





Finally we arrived at the Gezhou Dam where we passed through another set of locks, then we disembarked at Jingzhow where we finally bade farewell to the Yangtze. We boarded buses and set out toward our next destination -- Wuhan.

China Diary -- Part 27 The River Locks

The next stop on our river excursion was the Three Gorges Dam, but first we had to pass through the locks.


I had not realized just how long the process would be. We entered the lock early in the evening and waited and waited and waited.


The reason for the wait was that operating the lock is an expensive proposition and it didn't make sense to open it just to let one boat through. So we waited through the evening for more boats to come. Eventually a barge and another cruise boat appeared and took their places inside the lock.


It was a close fit.


Then as the hours passed and the sky darkened another barge and another, and another took their place.


Finally in the middle of the night the lock was full. The gates closed behind us, the water level sank, and when the gates opened before us we sailed on into the night.

China Diary -- Part 26 River People

The Yangtze is a major commercial artery and as such is heavily traveled. There are a lot of boats plying the waterway and they come in all sizes and shapes. The most common though are shallow-draft, canoe-like vessels. They come in a variety of forms but share a basic design.

Salvaging a floating package.


A one-man craft. Note the terracing of the river bank. Not one square meter of arable land is wasted.


Sheltering from the rain beneath a cliff.


Hauling in a catch.


There are lots of barges on the river.


Lots and lots of them.


You can see them tied up along the shore beneath the villages where their crews live.

Or even an isolated home.


But often they are themselves home to river people who live and raise their families on the water.


And then there's this, the fastest craft on the river -- at least I didn't see anything else in its class.

China Diary -- Part 25 Leaving the Gorges

As we left Shennong we passed the famous "hanging coffins". They're a little hard to see, but if you click on the pictures and look carefully at them you will find them.



These coffins were constructed by the "Bo people", early inhabitants of this region who were exterminated by the Ming rulers. Nobody today knows just why or how the coffins were placed in these clefts. Usually they were made from a single piece of wood. Few of them remain -- most were destroyed by the Dam project, and we were fortunate to be able to see them.




Then it was out again into the gorges heading downstream toward the dam. After several hours we arrived at the ship lock of the Three Gorges Dam.

China Diary -- Part 24 The Shennong Xi

There they are, folks, the nekkid men of Shennong Stream. This is not a contemporary photo, just one I pulled off the web.

These men are "trackers", representatives of one of China's many minorities, the Thuja people. The stream was originally a shallow, swift moving tributary of the Yangtze. Only extremely small boats (sampans) could navigate its length and in many places even these small crafts had to be physically dragged through the shallows. That was the function of the trackers who paddled the sampans and muscled them through the difficult parts of the stream. They worked completely naked until about twenty years ago when the Chinese tourist board forced them to start wearing clothes. The day we toured the area the trackers were not only wearing pants, but because it was raining, they covered themselves with ponchos. Here's what they look like today.


Originally the Shennong stream wandered its whole length through very deep and steep limestone cliffs, but since the construction of the Three Gorges Dam the water level at the mouth was raised 155 meters. So much for the scenic cliffs. The upper end of the stream, however, remains shallow and it is there that you can see the remnants of what was once one of the world's great scenic wonders. Here is the entrance to the Shannong. Imagine what it must have been like before the river rose.


Since the dam was constructed the volume of flow along parts of the stream is negligible and at some points the surface of the water is smooth as glass.


Our guide jokingly said that living here was like living in Shangri La. Except for the abysmal poverty of the inhabitants he wasn't too far off the mark.


Eventually the river became too shallow for our small boat and we had to transfer to sampans for the final stage of our trip.


A few of the boats decided to race upstream. Fortunately we didn't. The rowers have a hard enough time as it is.






At the end of the stream our rowers jumped out of the boat, grabbed towlines, climbed up to a towpath, and hauled the boats around to face downstream for the return journey. Somehow it wasn't as exotic an exercise as must have been before the Tourist Board meddled in local affairs.

As always, just click on a picture to enlarge it.