Tuesday, 20 September 2016
China: Day 8 - Yangtze River
This morning, immediately after breakfast we disembarked and headed up the trail to visit a scenic spot called the Tribe of the Three Gorges. This is a tourist site that recreates the life of a local tribe of people.
We took a lot of pictures as we traveled along the walkway flanking the Yangtze River, and for about a kilometer up a small tributary stream. Basic aspects of the life of the people, along with a re-creation of one of their legends regarding a young girl being serenaded by potential suitors. Another interesting site along the stream was an ancient burial site, where the deceased was placed in a wooden coffin, and the coffin placed in a cave high on the side of a cliff. The coffin was suspended at the mouth of the cave, half in and half out, with the head inside the cave and the feet outside.
After lunch we took a tour of the Three Gorges Dam site, probably one of the most controversial developments of the 21st century. The vast number of people who were displaced and impacts on cultural living is astounding. All for the sake of providing electricity to the Chinese industrial revolution.
The dam has two sets of turbines, and a total of 32 in all, each with a capacity of 700 MW. The earlier ones were acquired from companies such as GE, ABB, and Siemens. The rest were Chinese made.
In order to allow continued traffic on the river, a massive system of locks and elevators was built. I had never heard of a boat elevator before, but apparently they copied technology from other boat elevators in the world, including those found in Great Britain and Canada. The elevator supports small boats (up to 300 tonnes in size), and is basically a big bathtub that the boat sits in as it is being winched from one level to the other. They raise and lower the entire bathtub; water, boats and all.
They indicated that when the dam is full, the difference from top to bottom is 145 meters. This requires a system of 5 locks, each one being about 250 meters long. Our cruise ship passed through the locks starting just after dinner. There were two smaller ships that entered before us, and they managed to fit side by side in the lock, while our ship sat by itself behind them. Our rise from river level to reservoir level took just over 3 hours. We were traveling in September, and since the reservoir was low, I don't think we used every lock. We didn't manage to stay up long enough to see us exit the last lock and enter the reservoir.
