Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [133]
“Do you speak Chinese?”
“I can say nihao, xie xie, and bu yau. That’s about it, though I can count to ten with one hand. Do you want to see?”
Her name was Lu Hang, and she was leading a tour group from Xiamen, a prosperous city on the coast of Fujian Province. We stood on the ship’s deck as we drifted through the jagged cliffs of Qutang Gorge, the first of the Three Gorges. It is a narrow chasm—not more than 500 feet in some places—and many regard this as the finest of the gorges. But perhaps I’d been spoiled by Tiger Leaping Gorge. Possibly, I expected too much. My expectations were too high. This, I thought as we passed through the stony escarpments, was nice, not awesome, just nice. But it was not without its finer sights. Much of the cultural heritage of the gorges—ancient temples, stone pathways, calligraphy, not to mention thousands of homes—now lies underwater. But high above were wooden coffins, some nearly 2,000 years old, which had been placed in small crevices and caves, most likely during the Han Dynasty. Before the dam, these coffins would have been more than a thousand feet above the river, and to this day no one is certain how exactly those caskets were brought to such lofty heights. As we glided below, Lu Hang translated what the onboard guide, our very own Julie McCoy, was saying through her loudspeaker.
“She is describing what each hill looks like. This one looks like an eagle, and that one looks like a cat.”
This was amusing to me. I thought I’d been missing out. I thought she’d been talking about the caves I’d seen. I thought, perhaps, there had been commentary on all the villages that had to be relocated, or a discussion about the impact of the rising waters of the Yangtze and the mud slides that have killed dozens as the earth shifts to accommodate the surging river. But no. An eagle. A cat. Sometime around the age of nineteen, I had lost the poetic impulse. I did not see eagles and cats. I saw a big hill. Okay, a nice big hill.
“It’s very beautiful,” I said. Okay, a nice big, beautiful hill.
“I think it is very boring,” Lu Hang informed me.
“Really?”
“Yes. It was much more beautiful before the dam.”
“Do most Chinese people think the Three Gorges Dam was a good idea?”
“No,” she said. “People think it was a bad idea. They say it has ruined the beautiful scenery.”
“That’s true, but at least it provides electricity.”
“Only for Hubei Province. People in China think the dam only benefits Hubei.”
Lu Hang was friendly and inquisitive, and she asked me about my travels.
“You must join my tour,” she said. “After the cruise, we are going to Wuhan.”
“Maybe I will. Does your tour come with hats? I can’t join a tour group unless it comes with hats.”
“I will get you a hat,” she said.
“Can it be orange?”
“I will get you an orange hat.”
We glided onward to the Little Three Gorges, a canyon that meandered away from the Yangtze following a tributary called the Shennong River.
“In a minute you will see acrobats,” Lu Hang informed me.
Say wha?
What was this about acrobats? What were acrobats doing here at the confluence of the Three Gorges and the Little Three Gorges? Who would be doing acrobatic endeavors amid the gorges of Hubei Province? Vroom. This could not be real. My eyes were deceiving me. But there, way up there, 200 feet up there, on a thin strand of wire stretched above the river, a motorcycle roared overhead, followed by an acrobat spinning and jumping and not only defying death, but taunting it. And then they waved. We slid farther up the Shennong River, past more hanging coffins, wooden caskets perched in impossible locations. Death happens—always