The Relocation

Aboard the Yangze, cruising through the Three Gorges on Tuesday

Before the Three Gorges Dam, flooding along the river was always a threat, even as
far down stream as Shang Hai. A devastating flood in the late 1800s killed hundreds of
thousands of people and kept the riverside cities under water for 100 days. A dam was
proposed by Sun Yat Sen in the 1920s, but it did not become a reality until about ten
years ago.

The entire area is a monument to engineering, determination and a powerful central
government. 30,000 engineers from around the world worked on the project. It took
3,000 days of pouring cement 24 hours a day to build it. It was a trade-off: relocate 1-1/
2 million people now to save untold lives and property in the future. The dam provides
flood control as well as a lot of electricity for the entire country.

There is a series of five locks to move ships and freighters from one side of the dam to
the other. Under construction right now is the "Baby Boat Elevator" (The Chinese seem
to use "baby" as an adjective for small thus baby boats.) which will lift ships under three
tons up and over the dam. Amazing.

But back to the relocation. Everyone living alongside the river and up to 200 meters
above the river had to be moved. This involved moving villagers who had lived in the
same place for generations. The young people took advantage of this opportunity to
head for the bright lights and even brighter opportunity in the big cities. Those who
wished to remain behind had to abandon their farms and way of life for new houses
subsided by the government. One house per family, which means three generations
in each house, if not more. The party line is that the people now have nice houses
with running water and electricity, TV, DVD, washing machines and cell phones. The
latter don't necessarily work, but you can't have everything! The people now have
small gardens to supply their family with corn, potatoes, soy beans, sesame seeds,
vegetables and work as fishermen, boatmen for the tourist industry (more about the
wooden pea pod boats later) as well as gathering the medicinal herbs that are abundant
in the area. The only fly in the ointment is that after the water rose (the euphemism for
opening the flood gates) the people relocated are now isolated. Their only way out is
by boat which means to climb down the mountains to the river which can take an hour
or two. Our guide today shook that off saying, "We're mountain people. We're used to
climbing rock walls."

We took a ferry up a tributary of the Yangzi for about an hour this morning and then up
river another 30 minutes on wooden pea pod boats. I'll write about that next and hope to have a picture to accompany.