Day 11 Yangtze River -- Shibaozhai

After having cruised down the Yangtze River all night, we continued cruising until mid-afternoon.  The Yangtze River flows through mountainous country, so the sights along the river were mountain sides and other boats.  The air has been hazy to foggy most of the time we have been in China, but it was thicker at the river.  Mountains were shrouded in haze so that sometimes only an outline was visible.  The river is the main highway of the area, so almost all goods and people are transported by boat.  There were boats of all kinds:  barges, ferries, coal barges, dredges, fishing boats, water taxis, and cruise ships.  Some of the fishing boats were single person skiffs; others were larger flat-bottomed boats with a cabin.  All appeared to have a motor.

Homes were scattered singly and in villages all along the river, mostly up on the sides of the mountains.  They were all very similar concrete multistory structures.  They looked like they would accommodate several families.  There were several medium-sized cities along the river.  These had high-rise apartment buildings.  We were told that many of the high-rises did not have elevators.  Almost everything along the river is relatively new.  When the river was dammed, 1.3 million people were displaced from the original banks of the river to higher ground or somewhere else, so the current cities, towns, villages, and rural dwellings had been built above the new flood zone.

In the afternoon, we stopped at Shibaozhai to tour a Pagoda.  This Pagoda had its initial construction over 1,000 years ago, was mainly built in 1650,  and was added to as recently as 1954.  It had been built onto the side of a mountain and contains statues and carvings at many levels that illustrate Buddhism.  It is now  twelve storeys tall.  We climbed all 99 wooden stairs to the top.  The steps were unevenly spaced (some were about a foot up), and some flights were almost straight up.  I think we were the oldest ones in our group to climb the tower; it was hot, but we made it.

The staff put on a Chinese Traditional Dress Style Show in the evening as we "sailed" on down the river through the night.

Pictures:  Viking Emerald, Scenes along the Yangtze River, Shibaozhao Pagoda

Yangtze River water