Date of Visit: 1-4 Nov 19
Yangtze River Cruise 长江游船
The famous Three Gorges on Yangtze River is best seen on a Yangtze River Cruise. I went for the 4 days 3 nights downstream Yangtze River Cruise which sailed from Chongqing 重庆 to Yichang 宜昌. The cruise ended at Three Gorges Dam 三峡大坝 constructed within the largest of the Three Gorges 三峡, Xiling Gorge 西陵峡. The cruise travelled a total distance of approximately 650km.
The cruise included shore excursion visits to Three Gorges Dam 三峡大坝 and Shibaozhai Pagoda 石宝寨. I also went for a ship lift tour to have the real experience of navigating through a ship lift in the downstream direction while on the ship lift tour ship.
You may choose upstream sailing from Yichang to Chongqing, but you will need an extra day going against the water flow direction.
Yangtze River 长江
The Yangtze River is the longest in Asia, with a length of 6,300km, the third-longest in the world and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It is the sixth-largest river by discharge volume in the world. Its drainage basin comprises one-fifth of the land area of China and is home to nearly one-third of the country’s population.
The potential for extracting clean and renewable energy from the Yangtze River is enormous. The total potential power is estimated to be more than 200 million kilowatts, representing about 40% of the total energy potential of all the rivers of China.
Three Gorges 三峡
The first gorge, Qutang Gorge 瞿塘峽, is about 8km long and is the shortest. The second gorge, Wu Gorge 巫峡, is about 50km long. The last gorge, Xiling Gorge 西陵峡, is located upstream of Yichang. Xiling Gorge is the easternmost and the largest of the Three Gorges and is about 66km long. Xiling Gorge forms nearly half the length of the entire Three Gorges region. Three Gorges Dam 三峡大坝 was constructed within Xiling Gorge.
Although the construction of the Three Gorges Dam had diminished the height of Three Gorges significantly by between 150m and 180m, the thick limestone rock mountains still look spectacular to me.
Three Gorges Dam 三峡大坝
Three Gorges Dam is 2,335m long with a maximum height of 185m. Due to its size, it is one of the few man-made structures on Earth that’s visible to the naked eye from space, according to NASA.
The humongous Three Gorges Dam is a multi-functional water control system that provides flood protection from high water levels and has a hydroelectric power station, a locking system consisting of 2 ship locks, and a ship lift.
The dam was intended to protect millions of people from the periodic flooding that plagues the Yangtze basin by providing flood storage space.
The construction of the Three Gorges Dam has significantly increased the shipping capacity of the Yangtze River. By blocking the Yangtze River, the dam has created a reservoir that has submerged an enormous area of the Qutang Gorge, Wu Gorge, and Xiling Gorge for about 600km upstream and has allowed oceangoing freighters to navigate 2,250km inland from Shanghai 上海 on the East China Sea to the inland city of Chongqing 重庆.
These oceangoing freighters have to navigate past the dam, either through the ship locks or the ship lift.
Ship Locks
Three Gorges Dam ship locks allow vessels of up to 10,000 tonnes to navigate past the dam. There are two series of ship locks for upstream and downstream traffic. Each ship lock is made up of five stages, with a transit time of around 4 hours. The locks are 280m long, 35m wide, and 5m deep.
Before the dam was constructed, the maximum freight capacity at the Three Gorges site was 18.0 million tonnes per year. After the construction of the dam, and between 2004 and 2007, a total of 198 million tonnes of freight passed through the locks. Therefore, the freight capacity of the river has increased six times. The cost of shipping was reported to have reduced by 25%. The capacity of the ship locks is expected to increase further to reach 100 million tonnes per year.
Ship Lift
Three Gorges Dam ship lift was designed to allow vessels of up to 3,000 tonnes to navigate past the dam bypassing the ship locks in a transit time of between 30 and 40 minutes. The transit time is very much faster than the 4-hour transition time through the ship locks.
The ship lift is the largest and the most sophisticated in the world.
The ship lift has a water-sealed ship-chamber of 120m long, 18m wide, and 3.5m deep in dimensions. The vessel to be ship-lifted will need to navigate carefully into the ship-chamber. Once the vessel is in position within the ship-chamber, the ship-chamber with the vessel will either be raised to go from downstream to upstream of the Yangtze River or lowered to go from upstream to downstream. The ship-chamber, the mechanical systems, and the water weigh 15,500 tonnes altogether. The ship-chamber travels a vertical distance of 113m.
Watch video of Three Gorge Dam ship lift in action.
Clean and Renewable Hydroelectric Power Station
The hydroelectric component of the project can generate approximately 22,500 megawatts of hydroelectric power. The power generated is equivalent to supplying 50 million households with electricity and preventing an annual emission of several million tonnes of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, which is equivalent to 50 million tonnes of coal.
Three Gorges Dam’s operator, China Three Gorges Corporation, reported the dam has generated a total of 111.795 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in the year 2020. This is a new world record for annual power generation volume from a single hydropower station, surpassing the last record held by Itaipu Dam in South America in 2016. This new world record is a boost to China’s efforts in building clean and renewable energy systems to contribute to green development initiatives. The project has generated a total of 1.3 trillion kilowatt-hours of clean and renewable electricity by 2020 since it became operational in 2003.
Adverse Impacts and Challenges
The construction of the dam had submerged many archaeological and cultural sites, diminished many magnificent sceneries such as Three Gorges, displaced more than 1.3 million people living along the river banks, and caused significant ecological changes including an increased risk of landslides.
The significant increase in river water level at the Three Gorges had made the Three Gorges less dramatic. Nevertheless, I think the Three Gorges remain scenically beautiful as I saw on the Yangtze River Cruise.
The resettlement of more than 1.3 million people was an enormous economic and social undertaking. Many of the displaced people were farmers who had to give up farming on futile land on the banks of the Yangtze River and moved on to other trades or industries. New towns were built to settle these displaced people. Many of these new towns are on the banks of the Yangtze River and we could see them from the Yangtze River Cruise.
Shibaozhai 石宝寨
One of the many historical sites that had been preserved is Shibaozhai Pagoda. Shore excursion visit to Shibaozhai Pagoda was part of the Yangtze River Cruise itinerary.
Shibaozhai Pagoda was originally a 9-storey, all-wood, distinctly red building structure built between 1796 and 1820, during the Qing dynasty. It was built by skilled local craftsmen to lean on the steep side of the 200m tall Shibao Hill 石宝山 to replace the iron haul chains used to get to a Taoist temple, built sometime around 1750, on the hill-top. The pagoda made it a lot easier to get to the temple.
In 1956, while repair work was done, 3 more storeys were built to connect to the hill-top temple and Shibaozhai Pagoda became a 12-storey pagoda.
In the pagoda, visitors can find exquisite and meticulous artwork, paintings, and sculptures of legends in ancient Chinese mythology stories. As you walk up the pagoda on a spiral staircase, it gets narrower, allowing only 2-3 people at the top of the pagoda. The top of the pagoda offers a magnificent view of the beautiful Yangtze River.
Shibaozhai Pagoda is the tallest specimen of ancient wooden architecture with the most storeys in China. Discovery Channel called it “one of the eight strange buildings in the world”.
Preservation of Shibaozhai 石宝寨
The rise of the water level would have partially submerged Shibaozhai. To preserve Shibaozhai, an oval-shaped embankment was built around Shibaozhai Pagoda to shield it from the Yangtze River. The perimeter of the embankment is around 800m and the embankment is also the walkway connecting to a visitor walk bridge from Shibao New Town 石宝新镇. Standing at the hill-top, the oval-shaped embankment gives you the feeling of being on a giant bonsai in the Yangtze River.
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The famous Three Gorges on Yangtze River is best seen on a Yangtze River Cruise
The humongous Three Gorges Dam is a multi-functional water control system that provides flood protection from high water levels and has a hydroelectric power station, a locking system consisting of 2 ship locks, and a ship lift.
The humongous Three Gorges Dam is a multi-functional water control system that provides flood protection from high water levels and has a hydroelectric power station, a locking system consisting of 2 ship locks, and a ship lift.