Day 10 – Thursday 12 April - Chongqing - The U-Bend of China

Sad to leave the beauty of Guilin and the River Li, Xiamen Airlines took us safely to Chongqing.

I had always imagined China as a country shrouded in mystery; instead I am sadly beginning to think that this part is actually shrouded in bean curd soup.

Chongqing is a place, I suspect, that would NOT appeal to the average tourist seeking to continue breathing. But for the fact that this was the starting point of our Yangzte river cruise, we probably wouldn’t have ventured here either. We wouldn't go back and thank goodness we weren’t staying!

Our tour guide on this occasion was an aging Chinese gentleman sporting a very young man’s hairstyle which turned out to be an ill-fitting wig! It amused Sonia to watch him re-adjust it every time a mirror was to hand.

This guide was so proud of his “beautiful city” and enthused about the “wonderful views across the river”, views that could barely be seen through the thick of the curdling smog, and when you could see, the “beauty” turned out to be mushrooming half complete high-rise buildings set against a backdrop of ornamentally arranged construction cranes. These towers are set to accommodate the myriad of people that will need to be relocated when the Three Gorges Dam is completed in 2009 and drowns several unsuspecting villages making homeless and jobless around 1.5 million farmers.

We were escorted to the zoo by Wiggy and saw some Pandas – truly lovely creatures to watch. There were six in all and it was fascinating to learn that their existence on this planet entails eating continuously during waking hours or sleeping. The strain of four nights in four hotels was taking its toll and when we stopped to freshen up and looked in the rest room mirror, shock horror! There before us we could see two more pandas…well, judging from the dark circles around our eyes!

Lunch in “Granma’s” restaurant was a warm up in preparation for the “hot pot” finale dinner before we board the boat. The mild Sichuan food at lunch included chicken with tiny chillies which worked like hundreds of microscopic Bunsen burners on the tongue and dealt out a main course of oral punishment. Apparently tonight’s local hot pot is more fiery and the real thing. Good grief!

We bought some sexy silk bed linen after watching a fascinating silk worm demonstration and saw how they turn silk worm cocoons into king size duvets.

As the evening drew in and the dark gloom turned to even darker gloom, discussion over dinner turned to the Three Gorges Dam project. By blocking the passage of the river near Yi Chang, China plans to make the river more navigable, be able to generate 15% of the country’s power from hydro and control flooding downstream from the dam. The Chinese will achieve this by raising the river level by 175m, flooding over a massive area of land and submerging untold relics, people, villages. They have been systematically moving the peoples to new accommodation, often, 200m above their existing homes and also been re-siting the historical relics and even building dykes around those which can be moved. However, of great concern is the fact that upstream from the dam, there is little or no control of the waste and untreated effluent being pumped into the river. With no where to vent, there is risk of the Yangtse becoming a 480km Septic Tank with the toilet seat centred on Chongqing.

Dinner was the infamous Sichuan Hot Pot, a heated bowl partitioned in the middle to provide a bouillon in which to cook a choice of curious vegetation, bamboo root, slippery river eel, duck brains, warm yak’s blood and other local delicacies. We were provided with supplementary soy, garlic and chillies in order to “top up” the flavours. This was going to be a real challenge to our gastric systems.

We had been told that the toilets on the boat are mere holes in the deck – could the Yangtze really enter the record book as the world’s largest toilet?

After dinner - we had eaten lightly – we found a chocolate shop and stocked up for the cruise.