Wednesday, July 2, 2008

CD313: Leaving China

My final goodbye to the Motherland was unceremonial to say the least and rushed for sure. The cruise on the Yangtze was amazingly beautiful at times while being incredibly disturbing in general. Almost everything we did or saw was presented by a local guide as being provided by the Yangtze 3 Gorges Dam Project.

"There was an ancient minority village here but now it is underwater. Thanks to the dam the villagers now live in nice new houses much higher up on the hill."

"This use to be a fishing village but now thanks to the dam, there are no fish left in the water so the fishermen/women now work in constructing new villages."

The dam itself is immense. Words can't really express its physical size. It is set to be finished next year and fully operational by 2011. In the end, it will produce 22,500 megawatts of energy. It was initially predicted to supply energy to 10% of China's people, but now with the growing population, it will provide only 5%. It will reduce the coal consumption by 31 million tons per year which in turn reduces 100 million tons of greenhouse gases, millions of tons of dust, 1 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 370 thousand tons of nitric oxide, 10 thousand tons of carbon dioxide, and a significant amount of mercury from being released into the atmosphere. It also will also require the relocation of over 2.3 million people. in October of last year, the government said that they are suggesting another 4 million people who live near the dam should also be moved. Over 1,300 archaeological sites have been flooded, 80% of the land in the area is experiencing erosion which is causing 40 million tons of sediment to slide into the river every year, 172 species have become endangered and at least 3 are believed to be extinct.

At the end of the tour we stopped in a city called Yichang which lies 40km south of the dam. We went to the city museum, which was made possible by the dam water's flooding of a small island which was an ancestral burial ground for the Ba people - who lived some 3000 years ago and have no written history so very little is known about them. The most troubling thing was that the tour of the museum ended in a room filled with treasures...ancient, priceless, burial relic treasures which the government is willing to sell because they need money for the development of relocation cities.

After the cruise I meant Heather back in Shanghai. We spent 3 nights there and the weather was miserable most of the time. Torrential rain and crazy humidity don't make for good times. I did get to see some new sites, namely the Jade Buddha Temple and  YuYuan Bazaar which I didn't have time to see before. After Shanghai we headed south to Hangzhou. Sadly, the weather there wasn't much better. After 2 nights we came back to Shanghai for one last night in China before heading East. Our time wasn't really spent doing much of interest...we did put together a 3-D wooden carp puzzle which amused us for a while.

Early this morning we headed to the airport not realizing we'd be stuck in the middle of rush hour. It took over an hour and a half to travel the 50km to the airport and Heather almost missed her check-in time. While waiting on the tarmac for air traffic to clear i realized i was leaving China, perhaps for good. While it seems like i have been waiting for this day it some how managed to sneak up on me and i realized it didn't seem to matter as much as I expected as my excitement for Japan and then the US over shadowed any feelings of sadness.

We are now in Tokyo and my initial impressions of Japan are limited: clean, quiet, orderly.  I of course will have more to say once I see more and I am sure that will happen in the week that I am here. No pictures will be updated until I return the the US however so these lowly words will have to do for now.

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