Trip to China
Itinerary  |  July 3 |  July 4  |  July 5  |  July 6 |  July 7  |  July 8  |  July 9  |  Gotcha Day!
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Friday, July 7, 2006 We awoke early and entered our first gorge – Qutang Gorge. It was exactly what we imagined. Beautiful bright green mountains, sometimes with terrace farming on the side. We then entered Wu Gorge. This gorge has many peaks and was equally pretty. It was where the Dragon Boat legend began. For our daily excursion, we traveled down Shennong Stream, a narrow tributary of lesser gorges in a smaller boat. We saw a bunch of endangered golden monkeys along the way. We then witnessed something truly incredible. A wire was suspended from one side of the river to another. It was about 1,000 feet up. There was a man riding a bike on the wire with another man hanging by a ribbon from the bike. The cyclist then got off his bike and hung by a ribbon as well. It was terrifying to watch. In the crevices of the gorges, there were a few “hanging coffins.” About 2,000 years ago, people placed coffins in the cliffs so that they would be closer to heaven. No one knows how they got there as it was much too high from the water and too far down the sheer rock face to do it from the top. In any event, the water will soon rise so high that the coffins will have to be moved to museums as they would otherwise be under water. We then switched to an even smaller boat, known as a “peapod” boat. The men who rowed it exited the boat at one point and pulled it along the side of the mountain in the tradition of the trackers who did the same thing hundreds of years ago. We moved into the western section of the longest gorge, the Xiling Gorge, in the afternoon, following by entering the ship locks of the Three Gorges Dam. We, along with five huge barges, passed through three locks, dropping about 20 meters each time. Tomorrow we visit the dam itself. Should be interesting!

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