The Liu Xiaobo Project

Tuesday

This morning the Tai Chi class met. I recognized only a couple of the movements; from the opening one I’d venture a guess it was Ch'ang style, while I’d previously learned mainly a modified version of Sun.

The excursion today was by transfer to a smaller boat at Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei province, for a trip up a “lesser” gorge off the vast lake now behind the great dam. Always one is conscious that the water is some 200 feet higher than in the past (and this at low water in the dry season), obscuring who knows what, and yet the gorges are still spectacular. Some areas we passed over we were told were impassable rapids before—or were passed by means of crews of men, stripped naked, physically pulling boats through by long leather straps around their bodies. There are photos of this.

Then we docked, and boarded small motorized sampans to go still farther, up a “lesser lesser” gorge. The benches were hard and narrow, with less knee room than coach airline seats (if you can believe it). But we had all passed into the “family” bonded stage by then and thought it hilarious (and, hey, we weren’t spending our lives as beasts of burden). We were now intimately close to the water, could reach down and touch it if we’d wanted, what’s left of the gorge walls looming over us. Caves are frequently visible up the walls, and occasionally the remains of ancient “hanging coffins” of the Bo people who inhabited the area before the Han. Sometimes there are remains of more recent dwellings.

The boatman posed for us in a traditional palm frond hat and rain cloak, and then sang a song. I was stunned: the song sounded exactly like Native American ones, its cadences and tone. When he’d finished, the Albuquerque woman in front of me turned around and exclaimed, “That sounded like something Navajo!” Yes. But better still, the large Mexican contingent promptly burst into “Cielito Lindo” at the top of their lungs. Think of it: in all the millennia those gorge walls have stood, they’d never been serenaded in Spanish. Now that was unique. The boatman appeared nonplussed; I wonder whether he really never had gotten such a response.

Back on the Katarina, all afternoon the lake, former gorges’, walls passed: terraced fields of rape, sorghum, wheat, vegetables, scattered homes and settlements, large towns for all the many relocated people, with the same apartment and condominium towers as in the larger cities. One stunning view after another unfolded, including the one on the back of the ten-yuan note (called to our attention as we passed it). The litany of benefits of the dam despite initial skepticism, hardships, and loss of ancient traditions began to sound suspiciously like a mandatory party-line speech after the third time a guide or speaker offered it, in almost the same words. Yes, the dam will control historical flooding (by flooding, permanently), will provide much-needed hydroelectric power, and yes, everyone has gained modern bathrooms.

(Note: As you probably are already aware, the Three Gorges Dam was internally and internationally controversial from the start, and now is apparently being suspected of everything from actually increasing the danger of landslides to causing severe droughts: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/31/china-freshwater-lake-dries-up )