CHINA TOUR, 1983

June 26: After a cold shower and a good American breakfast, we unmoored at 08:00 and sailed down the fairly fast flowing, wide and turbid (brown) Yangtze River through Chongking, past the junction with its large Jia Ling tributary. Everyone collected aft and all but the two corpulent ladies - who just sat and read - kept looking fascinated at the river traffic, mainly consisting of Western-looking river barges similar to those used on the Rhine. There were numerous factories, docks, store-houses, stairways reaching down to the river.
At 09:30, we had a briefing by one of the four riverguides, Mr. Wang, and blue jacketted Captain Loo. This M.V. "Three Gorges", 28 km/hr, l.o.a. 68.5 m, beam 13.2 m and draft 2.4 m, has four decks with 32 cabins and is one of the three tourist vessels in addition to numerous 400-600 passenger vessels of "The East is Red" fleet sailing the 1,370 km stretch including the Three Gorges between Chungking and Wuhan.
At 11:45 we passed Fu Ling marked by a large stone ridge labeled "stone fish", where many telephone cables hang across the entire river.After a good lunch, I visited the ship doctor to get some medicine for my cough. Blood pressure reading: 150/85. Most of the afternoon it continued drizzling, so the quality of to-day's photographs is nothing to write home about, however fascinating the high banks were, with their stacks, creeks, waterfalls and bridges. At 17:00 we reached Shibaozhai, where we were given an hour lesson in the 5 tones and Chinese numerals by a modest teacher. After that, I met the two female riverguides, Ms Pen, 20 and Ms Yang, 28, both from Wuhan and excellent in English. They helped me take a water sample of the river. Next, we dressed up for the Captain's Dinner, which was truly marvelous, with speeches and toasts by everyone, and an anticlimactic sudden end.

June 27: At 09:00, we took a launch to the "Stone Treasure Pagoda" which is built close against a spectaculair stone rock which felt from the sky when someone was cleaning up heaven Here we climbed, sweated and drank tea, saw numerous treasures and the fine landward view across a terraced mountain landscape toward the small village of some 3,000. .

On the way downstairs, it was very crowded, mainly with women, children and pigs. The women carried large wooden frames on their backs or chairs-annex-cages to transport their children. Some had purple spots on their foreheads. At the dock, people admired the boat and "iron-mouth" Sonya, whose 16th birthday we celebrated all day long. Before lunch, we rejoined our boat and started the stretch to Wanxian.