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The Great River - Travels Along The Yangtze By Kamouraskan and with a little help from Lariel   Please see Part 1 - From Beijing to Yichang for disclaimers and acknowledgments. This article is copyright to the authors January 2008.

Great plans are afoot:
A bridge will fly to span the North and South
Turning a barrier into a thoroughfare
Walls of stone will stand upstream to the west
To hold back Wushan's clouds and rain
Till a smooth Lake rises in the narrow gorges
The mountain Goddess, if she is still there
Will marvel at a world so changed.
-Mao Zedong 1956

We are about to travel down one of the great rivers in the world, through the largest engineering project in the world and the fact is, most of us barbarians do not care. We will see sections of the river that after flooding may not ever be seen again by man. We will pass through mountain gorges filled with history that we know nothing of. We Are Tourists, and we will wear our ignorance as a shield through the Chinese waters. But then, most of those that came here over the centuries with preconceived ideas, foreign or domestic, did not do well, so we shouldn't be too embarrassed. A little knowledge in China does not lead to understanding.

For starters, the Yangtze is not the actual name of this river, although that was the name used almost universally throughout our trip. It's a western error, possibly made by British cartographers, and has become the accepted designation. Appropriate, as the river more than almost any other area of mainland China, has been influenced by foreigners. In a country where Mao, the all powerful leader, spoke with a regional accent that was supposedly indecipherable by the majority of his people; where we attend the Peking Opera in what we all now call Beijing; where the money has at least five different titles, words are fluid. If there were a proper name for this waterway, it would be Chang Jiang, the Long River. Or in more romantic terms, the Wen Li Chang Jiang, the River of Ten Thousand Li. Continuing the words-mean-little theme though, the Li - the name for the measurement of a distance of approximately under half a mile - is not the same from one province to another. It's also measured differently uphill as opposed to downhill.

I prefer Jiang, simply The River. My beloved St. Laurent in Quebec is also called simply La Fleuve, because rivers like these are the heart of the country and affect not only those living on them, but those far beyond even the areas they flow, or even drain. It is said that 500 million live on the Jiang and it's valleys, so that flooding out 'only' 1.5 million took some study.

As the Yangtze floods regularly displaced many millions, the fact that the dam might stop this state of affairs would seem to be sufficient justification for the thing. In fact, I've read that in 1919, China's great moderniser, Sun Yat-sen, proposed a dam on the Three Gorges, surprisingly, right on the approximate location it now is. China being China, this decision went through many decades, various governments and revolutions, many more bureaucrats, a swim and a poem or two by Mao, even more politicians and studies, while it ranged in size and location all over the map through the century, before finally returning to the original position.

Certainly part of the reason for these dams is still to stop the deadly floods. But while you're at it, why not build the thing a few more hundred feet tall and create electricity right near the manufacturing centres of China? Such perfection of location certainly merits attention and so what if the extra hundred feet mean that you raise the river so that a million or so people are forcibly relocated, more animal habitats are destroyed, and over 800 known archaeological sites are lost? Then there's the unknown risks that engineers have not worked out; such as what the tons of sediments that the Yangtze daily draws along its flow from Tibet might do when forced against the dam. Or that the resulting downstream currents might strip tons of earth from the cities built on the corners that the river turns on. Hydro-Electric projects are not about the little things, not when there's a big picture to admire.

Like all other massive dam sites, this seems to be about national pride. I know something about this, having watched the construction of another contender for Largest Engineering Project In The World, Baie James in Quebec. As a young radical, I could have recited the animals made extinct, the natives displaced, the environmental dangers not understood, and the threats in the future extensively. To no effect in the end. These projects, once begun and financed by the great corporations and tied to national esteem, always are built, regardless of the quibbling of protesters. At least no one sent us to prison camps for our protests and none of our groups simply disappeared after a rally, something China cannot claim.

So why not sit back and enjoy the flow of the river, we think.

This river and its dam are at the heart of the new China. Part of the boom and the confidence become the arrogance that we have experienced since we arrived. And just like Japan in the '70's, Korea and the US in the '80's, China is riding that big bubble with little interest, it seems, with the economic history of other countries. What is it about a boom that blinds people to the obvious eventual bust? What makes each nation in turn so self-confident? So very sure that they have worked out all the kinks that they are superior to all that failed before, especially when they refuse to look at the past failures.

Japan's crash nearly took down the entire western economy. The US and China seem to be working together for an even bigger bust, creating something unprecedented, but the rest of the world in wilful ignorance, like us ignorant tourists, are just sitting back and enjoying the flow of the river.

But these thoughts were all ahead of us from the perspective of our fifth day in China. Exhausted from the early morning start and the two-hour flight from Beijing, we are simply looking forward to our first view of this River. But alas, our government guide frog-marches us to a museum in Yichang , filled with treasures that are so culturally important, they are about to drown thousands like them under a million gallons of water in the next year or so.

Our latest government guide also comments on the forced relocation of the1.5 million due to the flooding, but in a local touch, does so mainly in terms of heritage. He tells us that "Thousands of historians and archaeologists (are) working desperately" to save thousands of years of artefacts about to be covered by water.

There are some lovely exhibits in the small museum and the guides are friendly and informative but it's getting dark and we're all tired and hungry. We drive through miles of depressed and depressing scenes of Yichang. Once a tiny city, and with a recent expansion to just under four million, it's a small town by Chinese standards. By the time we reach the docks, the lights of the several cruise ships are our only indication there is a river before us at all.

Our ship, the President 4, rises six stories above the water line, looks like the standard Love Boat and despite our exhaustion and the lateness of the hour we get a quick adrenaline hit from seeing it. After the rush of Beijing we're looking forward to finally relaxing.

But then they get us angry. It's eight o'clock, we're tired and hungry and want to eat, lie down, have a shower: anything but what we get.

First, we are told our cabins haven't been assigned and our luggage is piled into the hallway. Next, still carrying our hand luggage, we are given a tour of the ship. Not a tour of the facilities, bars or the Bridge, but a tour of the more expensive cabins we could have if we'd like to spend £400 more. We are taken up and down several flights, through narrow corridors with our group of 13 bumbling into each other, all the while being hard-sold cabin upgrades. We are herded into The Presidential Suite etc, all of us becoming more and more upset at this attempt to take advantage of us when tired and vulnerable. Not an intelligent move, especially when it makes me feel that I would rather live in a rat hole than be pushed to upgrade. But then we see our cabin.

We've reserved a double, or at least we thought we had. After all, this is where we will be spending our anniversary night. I'm not expecting much in size; I've been in ship's cabins before, but I'm hoping for cosy.

It isn't. It's on the second floor and is not only small, but has two ironing boards masquerading as beds built into opposite walls. There's a sink, and for some reason, a telephone, all within the shower stall. No fridge, no kettle and the window is right on the ship's wrap-around terrace, for all the passengers to wander by. It smells of urine and machine oil and the ship's engines make the boards thrum. The décor and the television look like early fifties Russia and there are only four national channels and no more BBC . Our hope that we can have a cheap laundry, as we're running out of clean clothes, is shot down when we see the price list of services.

Our exhaustion and resentment is further fuelled when we arrive at the dining room to be told at first that it is closed and that no one is expecting us. This is corrected eventually and we are led to a table for ten, where all 13 of us try to eat without banging elbows into the people on either side of us. None of this is the kitchen staff's fault, and we do thank them for putting together a meal for us at the late hour.

When we get back to the room and undress for a shower and rest, we are interrupted twice by people trying to deliver the wrong luggage to our room. The constant smile Lariel has worn for most of our trip has completely disappeared and I realise that the money I've been saving for an extra anniversary gift will have to go for an upgrade whether I like how we were treated or not. I don't mention this to her but go to sleep with every groan and creak of the ship firming my resolve.

Day 6

'The boat sets sail at 08:00hrs. Your shore excursion is a visit to the Three Gorges Dam Project. Wake up call by music. Please be prepared for this, try to leave the music button at Channel 1 or volume at maximum in your cabin.'

Any hesitation I have about making the cabin upgrade vanishes as we find people looking into our room through the cabin window in the morning. I go to the bathroom and hear the next room hawking up phlegm. I figure that whatever the cost, if I can at least get us into something decent for the actual anniversary, it will be worth it. I consider making it a complete surprise to Lariel, but any money I have is basically hers in the long run, so whipped soul that I am, I consult her first. So while she is doing a quick hand laundry of unmentionables, I go talk to our 'guide' Alline (who has been assigned to us as once again, our group is too small to deserve a full-time guide, so we share one with the rest of the orphan tourists.) I ask about the price for a double room and she responds that there is a king-size room available. I'm afraid that we're going to be placed in the Presidential Suite at thousands of pounds more, but it appears we're in luck. You see, Alline has no idea that we REALLY hate our cabin and only stayed in it for one night out of resentment of the previous night's treatment. No idea that we will now pay anything to get something better. From her perspective, the boat has literally sailed and she now has several worthless, empty cabins. So the original price of £400 for five nights becomes a quarter of that for the remaining 4 nights and I am ecstatic after viewing our new cabin. Though thanks to the bartering training of this trip, I manage to hide it from Alline until after I pick up the keys. Then I start to bounce about, giddy as a school boy.

I tell Lariel I am giving her an early anniversary present and take her up to the new room, humming 'Moving On Up' most of the way. Sure. The new digs are not top of the line, but damn close enough. King-size bed, twice the size of the old cabin, a private balcony looking out to the blue skies and brown water. Four pillows including two feather ones. We're now up on the fifth floor, so there's lots of space between the engines and us. A BATH! Fridge with minibar and a table and desk to sit at or about. Compared to our previous abode, this IS the Presidential Suite. Best Money Ever Spent. Without the upgrade we would not have been able to relax or enjoy our time on the ship. Having a cold beer (instead of using the expensive ones in the minibar, we'd buy extra at the dinner table and looking like alkies, smuggle several through the ship and into our room) or tea on the balcony and watching the Yangtze glide by. Napping or sleeping in our lovely bed with two feather pillows instead of the foam ones everywhere else made so much difference.

The activities aboard are organised with events and excursions each day, some pretty lame, some costing a few Yuan, and others essential. Right off the bat, we decide to blow off seeing the dam project. Baie James must have spoiled me for any other giant hydroelectric project. Who knew?

We get to Breakfast by 8:00 on Deck 2. It's a buffet, not as perfect as the ones at the Dong Fang back in Beijing, but still good. The tables are each tagged by the name of each group's permanent guide, so our table is only a number in a diagram filled with happily named circles. The Powers That Be are determined that we will eat 13 to the table of 10 and we must just get used to elbows in our faces for the whole of the trip. I am still in search of a decent cup of coffee in China and the food runs out early for those who arrive late. It's still a good breakfast for the early risers and we comfortably exchange the usual small talk about how we each slept and break up in a good mood.

The rest of the group, and most of the ship, seems to be preparing to leave for the excursion to see the dam. We decide to use the time to explore the entirety of the ship. This takes about 30 minutes.

Off the main staircase on most floors towards the bow, there are various desks and kiosks with stuff for sale, be it reflexology sessions or kites. The Ballroom is on Deck 3 where that night, we are told, we will have The Captain's Welcoming Banquet and the chance to dance or have a photograph with Captain Wei. Lariel, in reference to a scene from Family Guy where regular Adam West loses the last two letters of his name, keeps calling him Captain Weeeee! I keep correcting her by pronouncing it 'way', which then reduces us to sounding like teenagers;"Yes, way." "No way." We're fun people for an old married couple.

Topside is accessible from Deck 6 and it's the perfect place to watch us go through the locks. Exactly like the ones on the Union Canal or the Thames, except built for the Land of the Giants. Instead of rising 10 feet, we're going up 60 metres each time. The first locks will not be used once the area is flooded and it's a quick reminder that much of what we will see is about to be covered in water for possibly centuries or more. Once again we are told how exciting it is for the displaced people to move into the fabulous buildings and that the 1.5 million are happy to move from their centuries old homes and lands. Though in some side reading, we learn that many have been 'relocated' to areas where cheap labour is needed, sometimes thousands of miles away.

One guide unknowingly starts me on another rant when he points out that the tenements along the banks are built with, how wonderful! their windows directed to the sun. But for how long as the construction continues, until the only view is the building next door? How many years until the thrill of the modern is replaced by the frustration of the ghetto? How long until a bust? Until a crop failure, a disease, some eventual crisis where people are unemployed? Cut off from their support system in the countryside, their families, even their own garden for food? Will they sit in their rotting buildings and watch the television showing them the prizes of success while they ask 'why isn't that mine? Why don't I have that?'

One of our group is a printer from the north of Britain who says he temporarily lost a contract to a Chinese firm. He's not worried. He says they did not have the skills to do the high quality printing required and the contract will come back. So if the Chinese wish to stay in the loop, eventually proper training and education will be needed. But won't those people demand higher wages, thereby evening the board eventually with the west?

Despite the discussions, we've enjoyed lazing around on the ship, catching up and refuelling our bodies, for once as if it really was a vacation Once the groups have returned from the dam, there is a painting exhibition by what we are told is an important artist, possibly because he has a certificate from a government authority stating this fact. It's not apparent from his watercolours, which have some beautiful effects but have no power to shape how one sees the landscape. As well, the details scattered about the scenery are almost cartoonish, and by the end of the voyage prices on his work have been halved twice.

The evening banquet is as advertised, a much more formal affair, but we haven't brought anything other than clothes to relax in. The staff are dressed up for the 'Captain's Welcoming Dinner' which consists of a free drink for all of us to toast Captain Wei after his translated speech. Considering this must happen at least once a week, the crew puts their heart into it and the tourists try to play along. Afterwards, we adjourn to the ballroom where it gets a bit creepy as the ancient and quite tiny Captain chooses young ladies to dance to the sound of western pop songs. I will never think of Blue Moon the same way again. After the dances are over, they start doing group participation songs starting with YMCA, the Birdie Song and we escape just before the Macarena, have a quick walk about under the stars, then back to our lovely cabin

Day 7

'7:00 Wake up call to music
8:00 Passengers disembark for shore excursion to Shennong Stream
14:30 Mini-painting inside snuff bottle demonstration
16:00 Optional Tour White Emperor City
20:45 Minority dance Night
23:00 Documentary Video "YOUR YANGTZE TRIP SO FAR"'

Today we are off to be drawn along the Shennong Stream by the world-famous trackers, who according to the trip leaflet and its accompanying photograph appear to be naked whilst doing so. Nope, found out that the days of froggy little native boys running naked by the sea passed away last year - now, they wear clothes. How typical of us to come a year too late. The trackers are advertised as being the best in the world, though it might be because they are among the last. For centuries, any ship travelling down the river required the assistance of these wiry men. They once drew transport ships of all kinds by their bamboo ropes, right up to the first steamers brought in by the foreigners. Now, the rivers and harbours have been dredged this last century, and their working areas have been diminished to a shrinking region and now, they are more of a tourist experience than a necessity.

At 8:00AM we meet in the ballroom, the scene of last night's Captain-induced horror, to receive our boarding passes, which are plastic tags that we hang about our necks. We are to transfer to a smaller ferry. "You are leaving four," we are told, " this is six". Ferry #6, as the number suggests, is one of several and it takes us along the Yangtze to an inlet. The 45 minute trip runs us by the village of the trackers, rebuilt high above the expected water levels, evidence that the tourist trade is probably more lucrative than their old lives might have been.

Lariel is excited that we might see monkeys along the way, and historically they once were thought to be a threat to shipping as they threw objects at the smoking, thunderous intruders of the last century. But despite much scanning of the trees, we never see or are attacked by them, much to Lariel's disappointment.

Each ferry carries about 100 and we lounge about happily, enjoying the sunshine, asking questions of the guides and enjoying the views. Several hanging coffins are pointed out, and we are told that the higher they are placed in the crevices and caves, the more important the personage. Eventually we pull up to the disembarking place, which has, surprise, hundreds of market stalls. Another gauntlet must be run as we walk past the usual assortment of tat as well as a few new items. There are Little Red Books of Chairman Mao's Thoughts, miniature terracotta soldiers, a variety of musical instruments, T-Shirts and caps and questionable jade in every form from necklaces to small animals. The prices are not bad, and I regret not buying a flute when I find out that they are going for 30 Yuan. Lariel's reputation as a barterer has been dirt, ever since she negotiated for one of the group and ended up going higher than the last offer by the vender. So she asks for help from me in buying a hand-carved wooden comb. The seller asks 180 and I say that it's worth 20. I have 50 at the ready and Lariel offers 40. He comes back with 120 and she shakes her head and moves away. Seller calls out 100. I draw out another 10 and she offers 60. He counters with 80 and she again walks. Vender gives up and accepts her 60. Regardless of the price, her smile of victory is more than worth it.

We are next led to flat-bottomed canoes, which carry about 20 people. There are five trackers and Lily, who acts more as a hostess than a guide. Whenever the boat begins to bottom out, they jump off and grasp the bamboo ropes to haul us a few dozen yards before rejoining us. To our disappointment, they are all dressed in shorts and T-shirts but in the quiet stretches Lily leads them in traditional tracker songs. The tracker songs are ancient and special to their culture, going back centuries. It reminds me of the throat singing of the Inuit and I'm not going to haggle or worry about the incongruity that they have a CD to purchase. I'm hoping there will be translations of the words. Lily asks that we sing for them, and I'm tempted to try one of the dozens of canoe songs that I know from Quebec and elsewhere. But the trip is too short to teach any of the responses and I settle for leading the group in Row Row Row Your Boat as a round which comes off pretty well, something which will haunt us later on.

As they say, all too soon we reach the end of the Shennong and proving that this is only an exercise for tourists, we turn around. It's been a good day, a unique experience, but nonetheless, there's still a sense that in our life jackets and travelling in a package and a pack, we're still waiting for that special, never to be forgotten memory.

Back on the President 4, we blow off yet another optional trip after looking at the info available on the White Emperor City. We're here to relax, and we long ago learned that to sign up for everything was counter productive to that goal. So we laze under the sun on the upper deck, drinking our beer and chatting with our group members, betting on who is going to get the worst sunburn.

We pass by one of the last visible sections of the original road along the Yangtze, first cut in 1850. It rises above the water line for a few hundred metres alongside of us, then curves back down into the river, soon to be forever forgotten once the water level rises. Small craft of a variety of design, even some with sails, keep away from our wake. Just over one hundred years ago, this seemingly placid river was still their preserve. Larger craft had to be specially built and even then it took three weeks for one 360-mile journey, and 300 trackers pulling it along for sections, to make larger traffic even conceivable. The great rocks that marked the most treacherous sections have been blown into splinters. The narrows and undertows have been eliminated by dredging and flooding. The great warships from the many trading nations which gave us the phrase 'gunboat diplomacy', which once threatened or protected the commerce on this river have all gone. There should be something to mark these ghosts, something to tell us about what we are passing, but there is only the occasional static announcement over the ship's loudspeaker which never explains, only declaims. The bookshop and the boutique have several books on the Yangzte, but they are all photographs with very short captions. I wander over to a few of our group members and ask; 'history is not about museums, but why is that the only place we seem to be encouraged to find it?'

We pass pagodas, barely seen, crowning the peaks all along the way, but the loudspeakers and the guides are silent. Some are centuries old. Some represent legends and parts of the Chinese history and its ancient orders and civilisation, the stuff our dreams were made of when we booked this trip. Why are we not being shown this? It's like being dragged through a historically important stately home, and the owner only wants to show you their new modern kitchen. They can't be ashamed of their past; is it simply because they are unwilling to share it?

I find again that I am not alone in making judgements on the country. We ramble about the one-child-per-family laws and how the countryside families are supposedly larger, as they are allowed to have up three attempts to have a boy child now. Charming, the whole idea the birth of a girl being just one strike of three before you're out. We've heard whispers that this moderation was due to too many incidents of infant girls being found floating in the river, and thank God we haven't seen anything like that. We pass under several bridges of immense size that are clearly brand new. Only a few years ago the Yangtze was an almost impassable barrier dividing the North and South. What will the new bridges do to the orientation of the country? As we go further downstream, we seem to be seeing more of the preparations for the flooding, rather than the completed work. We are beginning to see the houses that are abandoned, whereas earlier they had all been demolished and cleared away. The erosion protectors are only now being built and we wonder what the rest of the journey will reveal.

One of our group comments that she'd been aware of the relocation plans, but had no idea they were being moved from farms to the high-rises. Another asks if they have some kind of counselling available to deal with the trauma this change will produce. I can't see it myself. When did I get so cynical? There's a further discussion about nationalism vs provincialism, which means far more than a Canadian should worry about and a dialogue about how strength can be a weakness when size cannot be controlled. And the provinces might want to go their own ways.

Tonight after another cramped but very good meal amongst good company, our group wanders over to the Ballroom for the Crew Night. The ship's managers have obviously researched what is traditional entertainment on the cruise lines and the crew gamely provide an amateur Las Vegas cabaret of a sort. It seems that the staff have been selected by appearance as well as skill, and their contracts clearly require that they perform some sort of act for these shows. The ladies are dressed in the skimpiest of costumes, despite at least one of them looking about twelve, and they wriggle and writhe through several routines. The male kitchen staff are also brought out to perform, stripped to the waist, although each of them looks as though they would rather be anywhere other than here. There are also traditional instruments and some singing which is at best charming, but they earn our applause before the disco ball is brought out again. Once more the female staff go into the audience and haul out a few half drunk passengers to start the dancing and I skip off to the railings for a cigarette.

I get into a conversation with one of the Aussies that would have seemed paranoiac to say the least, unless you had spent a week in China already. He tells me that he went out the night before for a cig about 4AM. The ships light were, as they were now, sweeping back and forth across the waters until they struck another ship, travelling alongside of us, with all lights off. In the moments while the light travelled over them, he says he saw at least twenty heavily armed men on the deck, with what he thought were machine guns. Another of the smokers throws in another story of how they wandered off the tourist track and received a frightened response like the one I'd had in Beijing. The Aussies looked back through the windows at the crew and passengers drinking and laughing and mumbled, 'They aren't telling us what it's really like, are they?"

On my way back, I am horrified to see on the big screen outside the Ballroom, myself and Lariel getting into the flat bottom boats earlier that day. Oh God, it must be the infamous Documentary Video "YOUR YANGTZE TRIP SO FAR". ON SALE! at the shop, of course. Seeing our bloated bodies taken unawares is not something I want to purchase unless it is to destroy all the copies. Something I would consider, but even in Yuan, I don't have the money. They also have still photos available being shown as a slide show on the computer screens in the lobby. The staff are quick enough to click to our photos as we pass by and are recognised. Instead of asking the price, we usually throw our hands in front of our faces as if we were vampires being confronted by the sun.

What is worse is that the thing grows each day like The Blob as they add on more footage. Even more frightening is that what we thought, or I hoped, might be a 'special' in-house channel on the TV is actually "YOUR YANGTZE TRIP SO FAR" played on continuous loop. It's a real hindrance on passion when you already wonder if your rooms are bugged and it's not much of a paranoid flight of fancy to imagine that one night you might be appearing in all your naked glory in bed on "YOUR YANGTZE TRIP SO FAR".

Back in the lounge, I've missed 'Auld Lang Syne' with its accompanying ritual circle dance, and I am honestly regretful. Both Lariel and I dance so seldom, that I should have been there, but the grins on our group's faces prove she wasn't abandoned. There is a threatening announcement where the passengers are warned that the next night is for them to show their talents, and I am glad there has been no sign of a guitar on board. It's our anniversary; the whole point of this cruise and this trip, and I am not about to sing 'Love Me Tender' to Lariel in front of two hundred people, no matter how much of a softy I might be.


Day 8

'7:30 Wake up call to music
7:30 Learn to Practice Taichi
7:45 Buffet Breakfast
8:30 Passengers disembark for shore excursion to Fengdu Ghost City
(more than 300 steps of walking, prepare comfortable shoes)
11:50 Fresh Water Pearl demonstration
16:00 Mahjong Demonstration (50 RMB)
18:00 Documentary Video "YOUR YANGTZE TRIP SO FAR"
19:00 Captain's Farewell Banquet
(A good opportunity to wear your best clothes and say 'nee-how' to Captain Wei. Take your camera to photograph the many beautifully and creatively carved vegetable dishes)
20:30 Talent Show'

The schedule is pushed under our door and I study it with interest because today, today is The Anniversary. The reason we were on this trip. The reason we had selected this particular tour and the thought of being on the Yangtze on this specific date, had sustained us for several months.

I lay in bed cuddling my wife and thought about the past year. What could I do to show her how much that year and the seven that had preceded it had meant to me?

I think of myself as an imaginative person. I can see myself as one of those Yangtze traders or an executive in a New York bank. In my writing I had put myself in the shoes of innumerable disparate characters. But I was completely unable to imagine my life without my daughter, or without this woman. Unfortunately, Lariel has a well-deserved reputation as a black hole of romance. Any squishy mushball sentiments that I might create within her orbit would immediately be crushed into oblivion.

We'd met as she was on a backpacking trip around the world and I'd solemnly promised her that becoming a couple would not mean being tied down to one place. At that point we had no idea if home would be Canada or Britain. Being married, and spending our anniversaries, in foreign locations was part of that promise. We'd visited and revisited a dozen countries and the length of England, Scotland and Wales in those seven years. Our wedding in southern Italy one year ago was agreed by all of our friends and family who had travelled from abroad to attend, to be the best they'd been to.

In just this last year, we'd revisited Pisa, been to the Uffizi in Florence, and finally back to our favourite, Venice. We'd taken the subway between Buda to Pest. Returned to Bratislava for the Christmas markets and through the Temples and Jewish memorials in Prague. We'd hiked beside the Lachine Rapids of Quebec, and watched Liverpool lose the European Championship in an Italian restaurant with family and friends in Montreal. We'd finally made it to the Kirkstone Pass in the Lake District and wandered throughout shires in England. Now we were in China. Not bad for one year, and not too shabby for independent travel as this was our first full package tour.

We'd both agreed that the trip was our present to each other, but there were still cards and somethings to open for both of us. My life would be forfeit if I told what was in them. The cabin upgrade had cleaned me out of any money for a second special gift, but I still had something for a paper anniversary. I'd bought a title for my working-class scouser, and she'd replaced my missing watch with another. (I had been presented a watch by the staff at one of the homes I worked at, and refused to buy another until it was found. So although it was not paper, it was the perfect present, if you believe that a gift should be something you want but would not buy for yourself.)

So where did we spend this important day? Well, if you're ever looking for nominations on the strangest place on earth sweepstakes, the winner is…The Fengdu Ghost City.

A mix of the Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism and somehow managing to be none of these, Fengdu Ghost City is now a regular stop for all of the tourist ships along the River. I have no idea where to start describing it, and I'm not alone in this. Research online comes up with little, on the site itself there are many photo books, but with only the sparsest of captions. The tour guides prefer to stick to the 'challenges' that each ghost (and therefore the tourists) must pass in order to enter into 'Heaven'. The tours are told that the site was originally home to two monks, whose names when combined seemed to mean that this mountain was for the judging of spirits. Logical, if you believe that MacDonald's was invented when Mr Fast and Mr Food got together.

You are also told, as you disembark down below at the dock, that the massive white head looming above is the 'largest carved stone face in the world' though it does seem a bit smaller than Mount Rushmore. Perhaps there's a technical definition we missed. Nevertheless, it is very impressive and would make for a wonderful opening shot if the manner of getting into the Ghost City were not so odd. Yes, we should have taken the lovely mountain trail along the beautiful manicured topiary. But our guides pulled us into the line-up for… the chair lift. And not just any chair-lift, the identical one that I had ridden in 1965 but had been too rickety even for kamikaze Canadian skiers. Once we get to the top we hit a translated sign that I will keep in my heart for a long time to come. As you may know, whenever a tourist gets bored, there are always the multilingual signs to make fun of. There's a wealth of them all about the ship. One of my favourites is on the top level; 'NO JUMP OVER BOARD'. Which seems a pretty pointless thing to order people not to do. There are several, 'NOT TOUCH' signs, and in the middle of the ship seemingly apropos of nothing, 'DO NOT LEAN OVER'.

As you get off the cranky old chair lift, having already arrived at the location' there is a sign reading: 'NO EXPLOSIVES, WEAPONS OR POISON PASS THIS'. Oddly enough, there is no booth for prospective terrorists to drop off any of these items and I'm sure they'd be lined up, shamefacedly saying, "if there'd been a sign BEFORE we got on, we'd never have brought them up, we swear!".

There is so much insanity, chaos and contradiction in the Ghost City, that the guides clearly gave up trying to explain it to westerners years ago. They stick to the fun part of the site, which are the tests required by spirits to enter into 'Heaven'. Curiously, these all consist of completely physical tasks which you'd think spirits would find unchallenging, such as climbing a stairway on only one breath or balancing on one foot. Or that each temple or challenge must be begun on the left or right foot, depending on your gender.

We begin by crossing 'the River of Blood' which is actually a puddle about four feet wide. We survive each of the challenges to make it into Heaven, but the afterlife doesn't even have any better shops than the Purgatory at the dock. Once again, the real challenge is the gauntlet you have to run through the press of vendors. "Hello, Hat!" Hello, Hello!" "Hello, water!" Buy our hats, water, books, jade watches instruments, but still no Christmas decorations or fridge magnets.

Having achieved Heaven, we are released in the time-honoured tour guide fashion that reduces everyone to children being let loose at the mall. " We meet up back here in 30 minutes. Everybody remember? Hokay? Toilets are there."

Now it gets seriously weird. Like the kids at the mall, we should have headed right off to the farthest reaches of the site. There would appear to be several lovely pagodas and hillside views that definitely would have been worth exploring. Instead we chickened out and stayed in the main areas, along with ten thousand others. As I've said, there was very little in the way of explanations or guides, and if ever a site needed them, this was it. Yes, the gargantuan figures in this temple with the burning incense were the Three Judges. And this particualr figure was the Empress, who interceded with the souls. There were more and more displays all set in gorgeous buildings, with figures clothed in fabulous finery and we were expected to push through the mobs and take photos without anything other than the barest of understanding of how it came to be or what it meant. With the overlapping of the commercial and multiple cultures and no references, it's like being at an amusement park for the first time - and you come from Mars. We walk down an avenue aligned by dozens of grotesque statues, which at various times we are told are temptations, or guardians. Well, I am neither tempted nor guarded by the paedophilia ghost or the bestiality ghost as they frolic with petrified animals and children. And the Spirit-Eating Ghost represents nothing I had fantasised about either.
And just in case we hadn't had the opportunity to buy anything in China up until now, there were conveniently more miles of stalls and vast tables of tourist junk and precious things for us to purchase. Then there are the tortures for those that failed the tests, which are quite extensive and explicit. There are life-size models of people being shoved head first into boiling oil and other charming terminations. Proving that a good idea is universal, there's a person being suspended upside down and having their ass sawn in half. We'd seen the identical method used in a torture chamber we'd stumbled onto in Bratislava. I assume it's not because there's a cultural link between the two countries; sawing buttocks in half is probably like inventing the wheel. It was not so much a matter of inventing it, but recognising a need. Or that the dimple on the bum makes a perfect saw guide.

With at least three large passenger ships moored at the docks below, the Ghost City is far too crowded to fit in any ghosts. Once again, I wish we'd had more time, more explanations and fewer crowds to explore this strange and wonder-filled site. Possibly on the off season, perhaps by moving away from the crush we might have seen more. But the tour guide beckons and we head back to the ship.

We finally mailed off the Italian postcards. I'd promised several friends that we'd send them postcards from Italy, which is renowned for its terrible postal service. We'd planned to do what most Romans do, namely post them from the Vatican which actually manages to get the mail out before it moulders, but never got there. I'd also brought with me a bookmark from the north of England which was to be mailed months ago, but I'd thought I'd make it odder by sending it from Italy as well. Once we'd returned home, I felt that a British postmark wouldn't be enough for our US friends, so I decided to haul them all along to China and post them from here. The postcards were pictures of the Crypt of the Capuchins, a site that only Kathy Reichs could possibly love. Each card was lovingly decorated with tens of thousands of human bones made into lamps or bedding or thighbones as angel's wings; very odd stuff. God knows what the Chinese censors will think of them. The bookmark is weighed out and found to be too heavy so it goes back into the suitcase for another 6,000 mile ride to England, where we would eventually mail it off. My mind boggles at the trip this little package has already had before finally making it to Florida.

Those communications having been sorted, I figure it's time to check if there are any anniversary messages or news on how our cat is faring. After paying our fee at the desk, we jump onto the World Wide Web. Or do we? We've heard the stories, we know that Google sold their soul and allowed China to censure their search engine, but we get right onto the BBC website and…. Nuttin'. We're allowed onto the main page but not any further. Well, maybe it's down. Let's get the results for the Liverpool games and… nope. Liverpool Football Club is not available. Mao only knows what corruption Stevie Gerrard might pass on.

Up on deck, it's another beautiful sunny day. We find a shop selling second-hand English books on the 4th deck that we hadn't seen before and armed with a few bottles of Tsing Tao, the addictive local beer, we lie out in the sunshine to relax. It's interesting that the further we get from the dam, the more signs there are of the coming flooding. Whereas before, any buildings had been long demolished, now we are seeing the older buildings right at the water line. The erosion banks have not been completed, and even the bridges across the river are gradually becoming less complete until now there are only the towers to indicate their eventual presence. The hills part on either side of us, and I think with some amusement, that it's been more like travelling between parted thighs than any gorge I've seen before.

Too soon its time for dinner and the Captain's Farewell Banquet. Again we are dressed far too casually for the crew or even our own table, but we're the anniversary couple and we've budgeted for several drinks for everyone with us. The group has overcome most of our worries about spending our night with strangers and the meal is excellent. Well primed by the alcohol, we head to the Ballroom and the Talent Show.

We all settle into a comfortable but crowded midsection of the darkened Ballroom, which is lit only by stage lights and disco balls. Ordering drinks, much less conversation, is difficult in the hubbub, but it quiets a bit once the hostesses take over. Our group may be relaxed, but we're still Brits/Canadians and more than willing to let the other nationalities take the limelight.

Is there such an animal as the professional Karaoke performer? Because one of the passengers certainly seems to qualify. He's clearly going to be the star of tonight's excerpts of "Your Yangtze Cruise So Far" when it is broadcast. At least that was our hope, when there is an announcement of: "a couple here tonight who are celebrating an anniversary". We are pushed out of our comfortable darkness and into the lights, all too aware of the ship's official video camera on our sloppy clothing and too full bellies. We are presented with good luck charms and offered a drink each, and ordered to link arms and kiss. If it is possible to suffer fatal blushing, we are having a near death experience. But little did we know that this 'honour' has only been arranged if our poor group agreed to perform for the ship. Our wonderful gang take the stage and as a reference to our trip on the Shenong Stream, begin singing and miming each the actions, 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat.' God, they look ridiculous and magnificent at the same time and we are so very grateful to them when we are told the reasons.

There are several games next, and though our group is a mix of ages between 40 and 70, the youngest (Lariel) is the least likely to join in. Though I must be a close second. It's only appropriate that the eldest in age of our group but youngest in everything else, allows himself to be bullied by us to compete on our behalf. He is leading for a good portion of the challenge but is beaten at the last moment. Hoarse with cheering and nicely tipsy, we say our goodnights and take a long stroll about the outer and upper parts of the ship.

Tomorrow is our last on the river, and though tomorrow is going to be far too busy for reflection, tonight is not the time either. As promised, we are amongst the last to see portions of the river, portions of a peoples' lives, before they are enshrouded forever. We've travelled about 400 miles down a great river, already partly tamed already by the dams. Clearly this cruise ship travels easily along what was once among the most treacherous of the world's waterways. We've seen almost a dozen bridges spanning a space none could cross before. And the river is not entirely quiet; all along the way we've seen the high tide marks thirty feet above the water line.

All this is for the good, right? The floods killed hundreds of thousands of human beings and displaced, in the last century alone, many more people than the dams will. But the flood dams alone would not cost the billions being spent. And the electricity eventually produced will be amongst the most expensive kilowatts on the planet. So we are still back to national pride, and this group of tourists are still looking for a national culture that is not being swept away to ground that pride.

We watch the water pass us by under the stars and kiss far too many times to wonder anymore what this trip is all about, what we had expected, and whether we'd recommend it to others. Something though, is definitely missing. Cruise ships are too new to the Yangtze, and too unnatural. Too much a part of the tourist track to ever give anyone a sense of the Long River. But we are together; that's more than enough on this night and we finally head back to celebrate our last hours of this lovely day in our cabin.

If the China we came to see is still there for us, somewhere in tomorrow's flights, Xi'an, or the terracotta warriors, it can all wait for a while.

Part 1 - From Beijing to Yichang | Part 2 - The Great River - Travels Along The Yangtze | Part 3 -