Three Gorges and the Yangtze River

As some of you might know, the Chinese are in the final stages of building a dam in the Three Gorges which, when finished and fully operational, will be the largest dam in the world and supply between 9% and 11% of China's total electricity.

This unfortunately means that over 1.5 million people have been displaced from towns and villages in the Three Gorges area and moved to Government constructed relocation towns on higher land to enable the flooding of the gorges, and many archaeological sites have been lost.

While we were spending our 3 nights on the Yangtze the water level was actually raised a further 2 metres to around 156m above sea level. Although still very pretty, I can only imagine what the area would have looked like prior to the flooding, which will eventually leave the river 175m above sea level, over 100m higher than it originally was.

The damn Dam, as some people have taken to calling it.

One of the newly built relocation villages. Some are already experiencing problems with the buildings collapsing into the river due to the fact that they're built on what is essentially just an unstable pile of soil.Scenery of the gorges.
'Trackers' - these are the men that pull the boats upstream when the river gets too shallow to use the oars any more.Karaoke and ballroom dancing on board the ship - the Chinese just luuuuurrvvv their karaoke!