Yangtze River (8-10)

I embarked on the Victoria 2 Wednesday evening. After checking in, I relaxed in my air conditioned room for over an hour. 

I was surprised at how nice the room was. In addition to being spacious, every room has a small balcony. Then I went out to explore the ship. There’s not much to see, as it’s a basic ship without many extras. I went to the top deck and was exercising there when Leo, the social coordinator, came to take me down for his orientation for English speakers. There were five of us: two young women from England and an Italian couple. There were 145 Chinese passengers. After the orientation, I returned to my room to have it confirmed that I did, indeed, not have a roommate. I had booked a room to share with another female to avoid paying the 75% single supplement and had wondered whether there would be one. So I had the room to myself.

At 9:00 PM, the ship set sail. I went to the top deck to watch us leave and to see the view of the city lights from the river. There were about 50 others on deck, too. It was fun to watch the city disappear as we moved down the river.

At 6:30 Thursday morning, morning music began so we would wake up for breakfast at 7:00. Meals were served buffet style and included both Western and Chinese food. As we expected, the five foreigners were assigned to sit together along with three Chinese passengers. When I approached the table, it was obvious which seats were for the foreigners, as there were five sets of utensils and three sets of chopsticks. We asked for chopsticks, and after a few meals, they were put on the lazy Susan for us, but we always had utensils, not chopsticks, at our places.

At 8:00 we disembarked for our tour to Fengdu, the city of ghosts. This was the only included shore excursion on the trip. There was an English-speaking guide for the five of us. She was very good—spoke English well and provided a lot of information. Fengdu is the home of ghosts/spirits. According to legend, it is where the devil lives. Good spirits go to heaven, and evil goes to Fengdu. It is built on a hill with the main pagoda at the top. 

Outside the bottom entrance is a statue of the spirit of good. Kindness is the way to have a good life and avoid hell. The spiritual focus is Taoism. Pillows before altars have the yin/yang symbol. Yin is female and evil; yang is male and good.

At the top of another hill is a statue of the head of the Jade Emperor.

In one place there are three bridges. In the middle is the Bridge over Troubled Waters. This is the path for entering the area. You should take an odd number of steps over the bridge. As we crossed the bridge, a photo was taken of each of us. When leaving, you can cross on the silver bridge or the gold bridge. The silver one is for wealth; the gold one is for longevity. Our guide suggested a third way to cross for good health: walk over the gold bridge taking as many steps as possible. We all followed her.

Going up the path to the top temple and pagoda there are demon guardians on both sides. After visiting one temple, you walk along a street and are not to look back. When entering gate, men stepped over with their left foot, women with their right.

One building features hell. There are demons guarding the image of the king of the dead. 

On the sides of the central altar are the torture chambers. These depict all kinds of tortures in hell.

Originally built about 2000 years ago, most of the buildings in Fengdu were reconstructed in the 1980s after being destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Our guide used this terminology; a sign referred to it as the middle of the ___. (I forget the words used to refer to that period of time.) The Jade Emperor and another building were just completed in 2011.

A special symbol of Fengdu is a character found only there. It combines the characters for “only kindness makes peace.” If you purchased the photo taken of you crossing the Bridge over Troubled Waters, you also got a keychain with this character. I decided to purchase the photo, which I usually don’t do.

The original city Fengdu was flooded when the dam was completed and is now underwater. On the opposite side of the river is new Fengdu, where people who were displaced by the changed river live now.

The river is low now for the summer season. This is controlled by the dam so that there will not be flooding during the rainy season. In winter, it is much higher.

Before lunch we had the captain’s welcome reception. Everyone was given free champagne, and there were snacks. I sat with the Italians. A Chinese family came over to do welcome toasts. The woman had her son, age 10, tell us about Guanzhou, their home.

After lunch and relaxing on the boat for a few hours, it was time for the optional afternoon tour to Shibaozhai. That one hadn’t been listed in my itinerary, but I decided to go. The temple on top of the cliff was built in 1572. Ninety years later (1662), the pagoda was built in on the side of the cliff as a way to get up to the temple. The two structures have a total of ten levels, which become smaller as they go up. The circular staircase also becomes narrower. We didn’t go to the very top level, as only a few people could be there at once and it was time to return to the boat.

The structures were built with no nails, making Shibaozhai one of the world’s eight largest singular construction buildings. They are also among the oldest buildings in China to have survived without being reconstructed. To get to the pagoda, there is a long, wide suspension bridge that shook when the crowd of people walked on it. 

As the river rises over the years, the pagoda will be flooded. So the local people have built a barrier to protect it from flooding.

There’s a small temple on the island. It has a special bridge here has a very steep arch. It should be crossed with three, six, or nine steps. This takes some planning, as it takes one large step to get onto the bridge.

The tour was interesting, but it was especially crowded at the pagoda. More people arrived after we did; so climbing up the pagoda was rushed. There wasn’t time to really look around. However, it wasn’t so crowded when we walked over the bridge and to the bottom of the pagoda; so that was good. From the top, I could see a steady stream of people crossing the bridge. We passed a number of foreigners, who were probably doing the river cruise as part of a China tour, which made me glad I was with my small Chinese group. Tillie, whom we had met at the reception, walked and chatted with me part of the way up. She used to be an English teacher and is now a department secretary and teaches a little.

Later I met David, age 10. He wanted to ask if I would take a photo with him but couldn’t quite do it. So I helped him, and his father took a photo. Then he walked with me the rest of the time. When we were going up the stairs, he took my arm to assist me. He wanted to take a couple photos of me for me; so I let him, as this is important to Chinese people. His English is good enough that we were able to chat quite a bit. It’s experiences like these that make me happy to be with this group.

Friday morning wake up was at 6:15. I joined the group going on the optional tour to White Emperor City. (Those who didn’t join the tour could sleep half an hour longer.) This was the optional tour I knew about. Again, I was the only foreigner from the ship to go, but I joined a group from another ship. They were a Chinese-American family and a couple from El Salvador and Colombia. They said there were other foreigners on their ship, but they didn’t join the tour. When we disembarked, we walked up the stairs to get to the top of the cliff. Fortunately, after ascending a few sets of stairs—about half way up, there were escalators to the top. There we walked along the inside of the wall. The original, 600-year-old city gate is there. It was going to be submerged in the flooding after the dam was built; so they took it apart and rebuilt it at the higher level.

The “city” is on an island, which was a peninsula prior to the dam. Now it is connected to the mainland by a long bridge. 

From the bridge we had good views of the Yangtze to one side and another river that branches off it to the other. It was a hazy morning, which added to the atmosphere but made photography difficult.

After walking uphill and across the small island, we were at the viewpoint from which we could see the view that is on the back of the 10 yuan note. It’s the first of the Three Gorges and is considered to be the most beautiful. However, since it was hazy, it was not the most beautiful like in the picture, but it had a different kind of beauty.

Our guide told us that the white emperor is a story about a white dragon that turned itself into a general. Realizing that this man was really not a man, another general declared himself to be the emperor and called himself the White Emperor. The brochure says that someone reported seeing a white dragon, which is a symbol for the emperor and then a warlord declared himself to be the emperor, calling himself the White Emperor. It is also said that the city was once covered by a white mist, like an emperor should be. This is a very revered story in Chinese history; so the site is very important to the Chinese. It was crowded with Chinese tourists.

The temple is at the top of the mountain. Up 300 steps, and this is after walking up to the steps to get there . The white town (Baidi Town) was written about by many famous poets. 

Outside the temple gate there is a poem written in Mao’s calligraphy and one in Zhou Enlai’s calligraphy.