Our guide, Herbert, informed us that he would be waking us up at 5:30 am to see the 5 (or locks)stages we would be passing through to get through the Damn. I wish he had warned us to wear ear plugs. We were contained in a huge cement 'coffin' with three freighter boats along side of us, edge to edge and all we heard was scraping of cement against metal. It was so loud...nobody slept. Got off the ship at 7;30 am and got on a bus tour that allowed us to see both the locks we had come through and the damn itself. Unbelievable engineering. Obviously the damn project brings tourism and creates electricity but the main reason it was needed was to eliminate the annual flooding that killed thousands of Chinese inhabitants along the river for centuries. Chairman Mao wanted this built but they didn't have the money or the technology. It had taken us 3 and a half hours to go through the 5 locks....think about the amount of noise! we went back to the boat, packed and left for the airport. We had breakfast in Chongqing (on the ship), lunch in YiChing (City of the Sturgeon or peace city)and will have dinner in Souzhou (City of Silk) Had the most fantastic spiced fish at lunch (lots of small bones) YiChing actually had the first damn in China and therefore the first one to have electricity. The Sturgeon fish here are 5 times the size of our new guide (Jacky..a man) They are as big as tuna. but very tough. (bottom feeders) Toured a small fish market with jacky...very smelly. Our new guide, Chi (a girl) has met us at the airport and we have a two hour bus ride to the Holiday Inn in Souzhou. Ate near the airport in Shanghai (that's where we landed.)
Had a good sleep..have a later start tomorrow.yahooey!
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