A boat trip that is fun...

Friday, 19th October 2018

We have visitors from Germany again, this time my mother. As a 'little surprise' for her round birthday next year (she is half a year older than the People's Republic), we have organized a trip. Not without selfish intentions, we are going on a Yangtze River cruise and to Beijing. First stop: Chongqing. This place in central China is one of the largest cities in the world with its approximately 35 million inhabitants.

Chongqing used to belong to the province of Sichuan, but it is economically and physically so developed that it became a separately administered zone in 1997. The city is located on the Yangtze River and is the starting point of the cruise.

We flew from Wuxi and had a guide organized on site as we had the afternoon to explore the city before boarding. Our guide 'Dave' first showed us the 'old town' or what's left of it. What we saw of Chongqing exuded the charm of an industrial city with a lot of vertically built residential space.

The remnants of the old town consist of narrow alleyways

And history prepared for tourists.

After strolling around and having a coffee, we continued to the Three Gorges Dam Museum. 

On the ground floor, a bit of the history of the Three Gorges region before the flooding is shown here. In addition to a farmhouse, life-sized bronze statues of the boatmen were exhibited. In the times before motorized navigation, these heroes of labor pulled boats upstream naked!

This incident was emphasized several times during the trip. Also important for Chinese culture are their poets and their works. The school children learn thousands of years old poems and my colleagues can still recite some of them. 

In the exhibition about the Three Gorges Dam, the great sacrifice that the residents of the villages and towns had to make in moving due to the flooding of the river should not be left unmentioned. Approximately 1.2 million people were relocated from one side of the river to the other, to Shanghai or to the south. This happened voluntarily and with pride in being able to serve the Chinese people.

In the square in front of the museum, there was a man with a peculiar hobby. He used the rainy weather to practice calligraphy with an oversized brush. I wonder what he does in the summer?

After that, we finally went to the ship. Our luggage was carried down the pier on bamboo poles and after a strict passport check, we were able to board the 'President 8'.