In 2018, the ship passed down a massive lock built into the Three Gorges Dam, which was a unique experience. The Dam has created a reservoir of water which drives the world’s largest power station, the 22,000 MW Three Gorges hydro station. When I did geography GCSE tuition, I was expected to spout a load of Western propaganda that the Three Gorges project was an economic, ecological and cultural disaster because the Chinese make a mess of everything. The dam would be destroyed due to billions of tons of silt piling up behind it (actually, the silt is removed by giant dredgers and shipped upstream to fill in gullies caused by erosion: we saw them sailing up the river), the rising waters would alter the micro-climate and destroy local agriculture (they have permitted the extension of the irrigation system and allow more food to be grown), the Tuja villages would be destroyed and the people would be dragooned into big cities and lose their cultural identity (the modern Wushan city is almost 100% Tuja who have retained their culture and language) etc etc. I wasn’t expected to teach that the power station produces as much electricity as coal-fired stations burning 70 million tons a year of low-grade brown coal (which would have been an ecological disaster of worldwide magnitude), the regulation of the water in the Yangtse has put an end to the summer flooding which has killed millions in the past, either by drowning or starvation after their crops were destroyed, and the dam has allowed year-round shipping up the Yangtse (in the past, each ship was hauled up the river in summer by hundreds of men who frequently died of heat exhaustion.
This year, the ship stopped at the top of the dam and the locks looked unused. In 2018 a ship escalator was being built which would allow far more vessels to pass the dam. We transferred onto a bus which took us to the power station. It was a washout (literally) because the mist prevented us from seeing anything. We got stopped by people wanting to take photos of themselves with us and lost sight of our tour group which was lead by a useless guide who didn’t notice we were missing or come looking for us. We weren’t able to recognise our bus and were starting to panic when two girls from our group saw us and showed us where to go. When the bus reached the major city of Yichang, we hailed a taxi to go to a hotel and the driver, who could have made some money taking us all over the town, pointed to a tall building 100 metres away which turned out to be the Crowne Plaza 5-star establishment. We booked in and had an enjoyable meal before going to bed.
The dam from an observation platform
One of the 22 turbine halls of capacity 1,000 MW
Part of the dam
The road bridge across the dam, showing one of the locks.
The dam after the mist cleared
Yichang from our hotel