Day 1
We boarded the cruise ship from the Chongqing Port. Dinner at the cruise was average but the night view of Chongqing upon departure was spectacular! We are having a great time!

The Three Gorges
Our cruise starts in the city of Chongqing and travels along the Yangtze river to the city of YiZhang. This takes us through an area known as the three gorges, which is one of the most famous scenic areas in all of China, featuring stunning landscapes across a geography filled with a long history and cultural sites like ancient temples and villages.

Day 2
After cruising for 5 hours (100km), we arrived in Fuling, an Eastern Szechuan Province. We started off our morning with on deck Tai Chi at 7am for 30 mins. And then a healthy buffet breakfast before before heading to our fist adventure in Fuling 涪陵.
Fuling city is also built on mountains although residents don’t feel that way.

This brave soul swam in the Yangtze early in the morning. He is the tiny dot on the lower right, the one who attached to a floaty.

Headed to the White Crane Ridge Museum at this port of call.
The White Crane Ridge
We visited the underwater museum at an area known as White Crane Ridge. The ridge is a long rock outcrop in the middle of the Yangtze river which is over 5000 feet long with an average width of 45 feet.

The White Crane Ridge is a stone rift that is generally submerged in the middle of the Yangtze river outside of Fuling city, but it emerges above water every year during the dry season from December through March. Given the size of this rock outcrop in the middle of the river, it has been used since the eighth century by local residents when it is accessible due to low water levels during the dry season from December to March. People would gather and play on the rock ridge, but more importantly, over the years many inscriptions have been made on the rocks which provide historical information due to the 165 surviving carved inscriptions, some of which provide hydrological information about water levels and other phenomenon.

Once the three gorges dam was completed, the upstream water level increased by over 100 feet, permanently submerging the ridge on the river bottom. In order to protect some of these inscriptions, the Chinese constructed an underwater museum, which allows visitors to take an escalator 120 feet down to view the ridge and see the inscriptions.
This is considered to be one of the world’s first underwater museums, and is a recognized UNESCO heritage site. Truly an amazing experience to visit the museum and travel down to the bottom of the Yangtze river to see this section of the white crane ridge.

It gets his name from an old legend which goes like this, a Taoist monk developed a famous elixir to cure various kinds of ailments and sold it to the local villagers. One of the wealthy aristocrats from the area heard what was happening and rode in to buy up all of the elixir so that he would have it for himself.
Recognizing what the evil elitist was attempting to do, the monk agreed to sell it to him, but at three times the normal price so that he could make more to give away to the local villages. Upon learning what had happened and how he had been deceived, the aristocrat returned and ordered his guards to bind up the monk in a bamboo netting and cast him into the river, which they did. As he was sinking and about to drown, a local fisherman rescued him, and took him to the, rift in the middle of the river and attempted to revive him.
After three days and three nights, the monk returned to consciousness and learned from the fisherman what had happened, after which he gave away his last bit of elixir to the fisherman to bless the village in perpetuity. After this, a giant white crane appeared and the Taoist monk climbed up on its back and flew away while playing heavenly melodies on a golden flute. Thus did the ridge come to be called the White Crane Ridge.

After visited the museum, we went to check out the fresh market!

The Three Kingdoms Live Show
Tonight, we went to watch an outdoor live show of the Three Kingdoms. The three kingdoms is perhaps one of the most famous historical Chinese periods (2nd century AD) that is read in literature and portrayed on the screen, and this reenactment of certain parts of that was amazing! The Three Kingdoms that are in play here are the Wei, the Shu-Han and the Wu. After the fall of the Han dynasty, which lasted for 400 years, there was chaos across China as different kingdoms fought against each other for power and primacy.
Overall, the theater and related theatrical technology that was used in this performance was simply spectacular. The water stage was huge, featuring nearly 100 warriors on horseback, hordes on foot, a stunning light show, amazing aerial acrobatics and spectacular water features. The stadium itself has two huge blocks of seats – in the middle of the performance, those blocks move independently to reposition the entire performance theater as the scenes move from battlefront to the palace and other venues. You literally feel as if you have a front row seat to the battle and the palace intrigue that takes place. Truly impressive!
Day 3
We arrived at the first of the three scenic gorges on the Yangtze river this morning. This gorge is the Qutang gorge which starts at the White Emperor city in the west and ends at DaXi stream in the east, the shortest of the three gorges lasting only 8 km. Tomorrow morning we will hit XiLing gorge and then Wu gorge the next day.

Wushan Glass Path 巫山神道

Wuxia 巫陜
We hit the second gorge this afternoon, the Wu Gorge, which is 44 km long and starts at the mouth of the Daning River and ends 44 km later in the east.

Badong 巴東

We took a small boat to enter a smaller tributary off the main channel for a scenic tour including learning about a minority group called TuJia 土家族. We toured Shen Long River 神農溪 and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.
Among the attractions are the gorge sites that are featured on Chinese currency ( 5 RMB note), The Elephant Nose Mountain and Hanging Coffins suspended off the cliff faces.
Elephant Nose Mountain

The Hanging Coffin
It’s traditional belief that if the coffin of one’s ancestor is placed on higher ground so their descendents will be blessed with prosperity!

The minority villagers of 土家族 live in the mountains with basic necessities. With no fields for farming or plantations in the village, the villagers have to each plant vegetables and raise animals on their own for consumption. Older men had to climb the mountains to pick wild herbs for sale in town to make some money for the family.
This picture, shared by our tour guide, depicts workers from decades ago (before the three gorges dam construction) towing boats through areas during low water level. The second person in the picture is her father. Hard work indeed. Obviously, this is an old picture.

We rode on one of these small boats to further explore deeper parts of the river.

XiLing Gorge
XiLing Gorge, the last and also the longest gorge, 76km long, starting from Dadong county in the west and ending close to YiChang in the east, which is close to the YiChang dam. This gorge goes through the entirety of Hubei province from west to east. The cruise ship passed the gorge at midnight and we missed it!!
Day 4
Arrived in YiChang. Checked out from the cruise ship.
三峽工程博物館


We visited The Three Gorges Dam Museum, which is built to explain the history of the dam and also explains the geological record of the Yangtze river going back 400 million years when it used to run East to West, it now flows from West to East (Shanghai)

The cruise ends at the Three Gorges Dam, which was completed in 2006 and is the largest dam structure on the planet. There are many pros and cons to the dam, but one of the things that did was raise the water level upstream from the dam by 30 to 40 meters, which changed the landscape considerably (and also displaced over 1 million people), but also resulted in a huge supply of hydroelectric power while increasing the ability for ships to navigate from Shanghai up to Chongqing, both for tourist and commercial logistics purposes.
Cruising the 3 gorges is a must-do on a trip to china and swans itinerary is first-rate! Great insights for any traveler planning a trip to this part of the world!