Mar 2 - Cruising to Jingzhou

Building on the River bank

River Police Station

We've been sailing all night and have continued for most of the day.  This part is being written at about 1:20pm, after eating lunch.  The river water is much clearer here which may be because we are getting closer to the Three Gorges Dam (although we don't get there until tomorrow evening), or it may be because there is lots of work going on building levees on each shore, which would help prevent erosion.

Ferry across the river

Unloading the ferry

The river is narrower now, but not so narrow that it is crowded.  There are far fewer boats than there have been since we began the trip.  We can clearly see the work going on.  They are unloading the boats of sand, gravel, large boulders, etc.  It is interesting to see the various ways that they do this.  In some cases, there are long conveyor belts that come out of the front of these boats that transport the gravel up to the top of the levee, and it gets dumped in big piles.  In other cases, they use big diggers to pick up the huge boulders and drop them over the side, or load them on to big trucks that have come down from the top of the levee.

Unloading the aggregate

Stabilizing the river banks

Workers on shore are moving these materials around.  Right at the water level and above for about 5-10 feet, is where they have laid down rip-rap - the large boulders.  Above that along the sides of the levee, it appears that they break the area into strips about 20 feet wide, separated by what appears to be cement borders (but are likely something else).  In the gaps, it seems that they lay some sort of cloth foundation, and then they cover this with gravel of various sizes. to fill that strip.  I don't know, but I imagine after that size aggregate is laid down (by hand to spread it from what we saw), then they add smaller gravel to fill in around this larger gravel.  From the finished parts we have seen, they appear to be very smooth, so I believe our assumptions are correct.

Three Gorges Dam Project Lecture

We attended a 45 minute lecture on the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges Dams this morning.    Gary, our cruise director, gave us an interesting Powerpoint slide show and talk.  He gave us lots of interesting pieces of information about this river - the third largest river in the world behind the Nile and the Amazon.  We are now in the area of the middle reaches of the river, which has historically been hit by terrible floods.  At present, 145 million people would be affected if the river flooded on a regular basis, so this is the reason for the work that is going on.  The Three Gorges Dam was built mainly for flood control, but also for hydro power generation and navigation assistance.  The levees add to the protection of the flat farm lands along the shore, preventing the river from spilling on to the land, displacing all those people and ruining all those crops.  They are sure doing a lot of work in this country.  It is pretty interesting.

Welcoming band

When we got to Jingzhou, it was fairly late.  We got off the boat at about 5:00pm, traveled through part of the city, through the city wall, and over to the museum.  The population of this city is about 1.2 million, with about 800 000 permanent residents.  Inside the city wall, there are about 120 000 who live in various apartments there.  Jeff, our local guide was very hard to understand, and there was some serious echo from the speakers on the bus, which didn't help at all.  He indicated that the government is working to move the population outside the city walls through various means.  First they are moving the government offices, then the hospitals, and then the schools.  They feel this will encourage a lot of the population to them move as well.

Beautiful museum building

Jingzhou Museum

This museum wasn't as interesting, and because it was almost dark, it was hard to see things.  We only got to go into a small part of the museum, and with our many buses from the ship, it was crowded and very noisy.  Each bus guide was talking to their group, and they all were making so much noise and "fighting" for space that we found it quite uncomfortable.  We decided to move ahead of our group and look on our own.  We were able to get some pictures with my camera, and hopefully will be able to adjust them a bit when putting them on the computer.

Looking at the exhibits

It was dark by the time we left the museum, and took us to Phoenix park that overlooked the city wall.  The wall had lights on it, and was quite spectacular looking.  Hopefully the photos will do it some justice.  It was cold and damp, so we only stayed 20 minutes and then headed back to our ship.

Statue at the wall

View of the city wall

Again, the driver was very aggressive.  I would hate to be driving a car near them.  I think the rule must be if you are bigger, you can get in the spot.  There are lots of horns being honked, but I don't know if anyone pays any attention.  I would not be comfortable driving in this country.

Lights at the Wall

Once back at the ship, dinner was scheduled right away, so we washed up and then went to dish up at the buffet before everyone else got back and the line got long.  Once everyone was on board, the ship pulled out, and we continued our journey up the river.  Tomorrow, we go through the Three Gorges area where there are some dams, some locks to travel through, and a couple of tours.  One of the tours is optional, and we bought that one.  Hopefully the weather is more clear.  Right now, there is a lot of fog.  We haven't seen the sunshine since we got here, although it hasn't rained for a couple days.  Some of the fog must be smog, but it manly appears to be fog now.