We were woken again before 7AM by the dulcet tones of IvyIvy announcing breakfast (four times -- twice in Chinese, and twice in English). Since we weren't planning to go on the morning excursion to the nearby city, we could have gone back to sleep... except that we knew that there would be at least a dozen other announcements before the excursion left at 8, that breakfast would be cleared away by 7:45, and that lunch wasn't going to be until 1PM. So we threw on some clothes, had breakfast (with everyone else, none of whom planned to go on the excursion, but who had reached identical conclusions)... and then we all went back to bed. I'm not sure that repeat visitors is one of the metrics that the cruise ship company tracks....
We started the passage of the first gorge around 10:30AM, but I have to say that although I liked it I didn't find it dramatically more impressive than the river valley upstream. There were two main reasons: first, it was particularly foggy/hazy (as opposed to just normally foggy/hazy) so we couldn't see very far, and second, the dam downstream has raised the level of the water by 60-80 meters in the gorges, which perhaps isn't that much compared to the at times several hundred meters high rock walls, but which has eliminated any visible current, making it more like going through a fjord than a river gorge. On the other hand, perhaps it was just a case of having too-high expectations.
After lunch we went on an excursion up what was described as an idyllic side valley, first on a fair-sized ferry, then on a small wooden boat rowed by four or five men from the Tujia "minority people". The side valley and turned into a canyon and was quite scenic, although it too was much less impressive (at least in the parts we went through) than it would have been when the water level was much lower, and the men instead of rowing would have stripped almost naked and pulled the boat up rapids (as shown in the photo on the front of the brochure we were given...). Not the first time sights in China have been oversold.
And the idyllic nature of the area was also somewhat impacted by the astounding concrete towers (which soared at least a couple of hundred meters above the river) that are being built to support a new superhighway that will cross the side valley just before the entrance to the canyon. On the other hand, the construction was truly impressive!
The most interesting thing about the excursion was perhaps the thoughts it provoked about China's minority peoples. To start with, it may be a bit of cliché, but at least to this outsider they really do all look the same... or at least, similar: there's enough variety in appearance among the Han majority that (with a couple of exceptions) I wouldn't know that someone was a member of an ethnic minority unless they either dressed up in traditional garb or told me so.
Next, I suspect that for many members of minorities (with a couple of major exceptions, such as Tibetans or Uigurs), their ethnicity is irrelevant except in so far as it confers advantages. For one thing, it allows them to make money in ways that normal Chinese couldn't (such as by rowing boats up the Shennong stream... which may be hard work, but almost certainly is less hard and significantly more lucrative than working in the fields, which is probably what these guys would have been doing otherwise). For another, they are permitted two children instead of one (although this might be a bit misleading, since the one child policy was relaxed some years ago in the countryside (i.e., outside of towns and cities)... which is probably where most of the minorities live).
In sum, there may be pervasive discrimination in other ways against minorities in China, although I haven't seen or heard that this is the case, but on the surface it seems like their situation is not bad.
A last observation: we saw very little wildlife -- animals or birds -- while going up the side stream... and in fact we have seen very few animals or birds anywhere in China thus far, quite striking when compared with suburban and country areas in Europe or the US. Pollution? Hunting? Avoidance of noise? Too many people? All of the above?
In the evening after dinner we started our four-hour passage through the five-stage locks of the Three Gorges Dam. Each lock is 280m long, 35m wide, has gates over 40 meters high, and can raise or lower ships 20m (for a total of 100m). The scale is awe-inspiring, almost too big to take in until the ship was actually in the lock... along with five other large ships. I thought our cruise ship was fairly large... but it was dwarfed by the locks. Tremendously impressive.
But long, and with another 7AM wake-up ahead of us we went to sleep in mid-transit around midnight.
