Nice travel blurb about Three Gorges Dam, which has become quite a tourist site, from the New York Times.
September 24, 2006
The Other Great Wall
By JOSEPH KAHN
Since the end of imperial rule, Chinese leaders have shared a colossal engineering ambition: to dam the mighty Yangtze River. In May, 87 years after Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese Nationalist leader, first proposed locating a dam downstream of the scenic Three Gorges, workers added the last blocks of concrete to raise the Three Gorges Dam to its full 610-foot height and 1.4-mile girth.
The dam demands superlatives: it is the world’s largest concrete structure and the largest dam in terms of water displacement, flood control and power generation. It is five times as wide as the Hoover Dam, and the reservoir it has created stretches for about 400 miles, longer than Lake Superior. When it becomes fully functional in 2009, the dam’s 26 turbines should produce 84.68 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year, meeting nearly one-tenth of China’s needs.
If it works as planned, the dam will also contain the summer rains that regularly flood settlements along the lower Yangtze, potentially saving tens of thousands of lives. Yet the costs are also enormous, even beyond the $25 billion price tag. The dam has changed the geographic face of China, its reservoir forming a giant man-made lake amid stunning and once splendidly remote cliffs. Scores of cities and towns, some of them with artifacts that date back 2,000 years, have disappeared. And at least 1.3 million people have been relocated.
Whatever the pros and cons, the dam is fast becoming a beacon for tourists, a Great Wall across the Yangtze. The Chinese expect it to attract more than a million visitors this year. They come to see an engineering marvel, a hulking edifice that consumes the river and then spits it out in a pressurized spray that arcs hundreds of feet into the sky. The “placid lake” once promised in a poem by Mao Zedong has indeed replaced the muddy rapids. And the Three Gorges, though diminished in stature, have acquired a new kind of tranquillity.
Essentials: Three Gorges Dam
The easiest way to see the dam is on a cruise. Reputable lines with itineraries that stop at the dam include Viking River Cruises (877-668-4546; www.vikingrivercruises.com; 13 nights from $2,779 a person, double occupancy), Orient Royal Cruises (www.orientroyalcruise.com; three nights from $820 a person, double occupancy) and Victoria Cruises (800-348-8084; www.victoriacruises.com; three nights from $820 a person, double occupancy).
