Thursday, May 14th - Yangtze River Cruise

We slept fairly well in our individual but comfortable beds. The cabin is quite small. There is a small desk and one chair. The upgrade to a suite which has a sitting area was $1200. US so we decided against it. We have a small balcony. Unfortunately, the weather is overcast but fortunately, it is not cold. The bathroom is adequate except that the hot water is inconsistent. After hearing Lenny moaning and groaning in the shower this morning, I decided to wait till we came back from our tour to give it a try.

After breakfast we had a talk about the Three Gorges Dam Project and then a talk about Chinese Medicine from the ship's physician. He actually performed acupuncture on someone from the audience who was having shoulder problems and also demonstrated a procedure called cupping. Mike Geller has had some extreme knee pain from all the climbing we have been doing and he had an acupuncture treatment earlier in the morning and said that it was very helpful.

Our destination today is FENGDU known as The City of Ghosts. Fengdu is located on the northern bank of the Tangtze, 176 kilometers downstream from Chongqing. It has a population of 760,000. The town was impacted severely by the building of the huge Three Gorges Dam. The town was completed flooded and lost as the water level was allowed to rise. The people were relocated across the river from their village to the newly built city across the river. Many have very bad feelings about the building of the dam here. The city went from a population of 5000 people to a population of 760,000.

Fengdu recieved its reputation as the "ghost city" in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The people began to call Fengdu the "ghost city" after two officials named Wang Fang Ping and Ying Chang Sheng whose surnames, when combined, sound very much like "King of Hell". The Chinese are very superstitious people and they believe that hell is exactly like that in the real world. In hell, a spirit goes through the whole bureaucracy to be finally judged. Those pure of spirit will be rewarded and those sinful of spirit will be subjected to severe punishments. The temples built on Mt. Minshan displays instruments of torture and wild demon statues which vividly depict the Chinese people's imagination of Hell. Landmarks on the hill, bear horrible names - Ghost Torturing Pass, Tower of last Glance to Home, No Way out Bridge and River of Blood.

We took a ski lift up about three quarters of the way up the mountain and then hiked the rest of the way up. China is certainly not short of steps and we feel that we have been climbing and climbing and climbing. We are hoping that this is helping to keep our weight gain to a minimum but we are not hopeful of this. The rice and noodles are starting to take their toll. Our leg muscles have just recovered from climbing The Great Wall and today they are going to be sore again. From the top, we found the figures to be quite gory as well as the depictions of the torture. There was a very good view of the city from the top but our pictures are poor due to the hazy sky. Most of our group took the ski lift back down but we opted to walk down with a few other people from our boat and we actually beat them to the bottom.

The guide from our boat told us that this city is his home town and that he and his family and the entire community were relocated across the river. He spoke negatively about the dam project and said that the day everyone was relocated, they all spent the day crying. He also talked about the earthquake which happened just one year ago and which the world watched on TV with such empathy for the people here who lost their homes and their lives. Basically, the entire city was destroyed and the rebuilding is still going on. At any rate, Fengdu is 700 miles from the earthquake site and our guide said that they felt it very strongly here and that for several days when the after quakes were happening, most of the people slept outside as they were so fearful that their apartments would collapse as well. Many of the ancient temples on the mountain we visited today were cracked from the earthquake but none were completely destroyed.

Both Lenny and I had haircuts in the ship's salon - $10.00 US for Lenny and $20.00 US for me because I got a shampoo and blow dry as well. Len's cut came out very well and so did mine. The best part of mine was the wonderful head massage that was included. We are both set now till we get home.

We also played a few hands of gin in the ship's card room. Then one of the ship's guide's sat down with us and taught us to play "Beat the Landlord". When we saw it being played in the parks, we thought it was like gin rummy but it is actually quite different and very complicated. I don't think that we got the hang of it at all.

Tonight is the captain's cocktail reception so we will all go.
Tomorrow, we will transfer to smaller boats for a trip through the smallest and narrowest of the three gorges.