The Three Gorges Dam

Monday March 30^th…

I woke up to find out we made it through the rest of the ship locks with success.

I grabbed a quick breakfast (of course it had to be quick because I decided to sleep in J). After breakfast it was time for our excursion to see the Three Gorges Dam. We got off of the ship and loaded onto buses. The buses took us over to the dam.

We had to go through a security check and then we were permitted to go to the lookout area. Seeing the dam was a big disappointment. Yes it is huge…after all it is the largest dam in the world but they didn’t allow us anywhere near the dam. We were only able to go to two different lookout points. I am glad I got to see the Dam in person, however the statistics that go with the dam are much more remarkable. For example, 20 towns were flooded and relocated (about 1.3 million people) to complete this project.

The main dam wall is made from concrete. It is 2,309 m long, 101 m high. The bottom of the wall is 115 m thick and 40 m thick at the top. Overall the project used 27,200,000 cubic meters of concrete, 436,00 tons of steel and moved about 102,600,000 cubic meters of the earth. When all 34 generators are installed the estimated annual electricity generated will be over 100 TWh. 32 of the 34 generators will be main generators, each with a capacity of 700MW. The remaining 2 generators will be plant power generators each with a capacity of 50MW.

A few more generators need to be installed and the ship elevator needs to be built but other than that the Three Gorges Dam Project is virtually complete. They are literally creating a water elevator to have in addition to the ship locks. It is projected that the elevator will be able to move one ship in 45 minutes…the time of one ship lock but it will cover the same height as all 5 of the ship locks put together.

Like I said the statistics that go with the dam are much more exciting to learn about rather than just looking at a big slab of concrete.

After the excursion was over we got back on the ship and headed into the 3^rd gorge, Xiling Gorge. We weren’t able to stay on the sundeck long because lunch was being served but the Gorge was slightly different than the others. This gorge had many more flat faced stone/cliffs at the base of the mountains. It was a different form of beauty but still out of this world to be floating down the river in-between two cliffs.

After lunch was over it was time to get off the ship. Our cruise down the Yangtze was over. We had arranged for a driver to pick us up at the dock. He took us to the airport in Yichang. This airport was the smallest airport I have ever seen. There were cows roaming on the front lawn and there were only 4 gates in the whole airport. Needless to say, with only 4 gates and a small runway, it was the quickest take off ever!! It was nice not to sit on the tarmac for an hour before taking off…I felt like the door to the plane was hardly locked and we were already in the air – it was great.

I loved the cruise. We were very fortunate with the weather and I saw a lot of China I would not have seen any other way besides floating down the Yangtze River. It was unprecedented beauty!