Gorging on Mao's wisdom (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Gorging on Mao's wisdom

2:15pm Wednesday 18th September 2002 in

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I HAD mugged up on phase two of our tour a cruise up the world-famous beauty spot, the Yangtze's Three Gorges, which are soon to be partially submerged by the world's biggest hydro-electric scheme.

The building of the Three Gorges Dam Project commenced in 1994, after considerable argument and international scepticism, and the resultant 300-mile lake will start backing up behind the dam next June.

We noticed the Chinese learn things by rote and stick very much to the facts.

As we passed up through the Three Gorges, occasionally we would look at towns and ask staff on the ship how far the water would reach when the dam was completed.

Invariably they would turn and say: "You mean as a result of the Three Gorges Dam Project?" The title would be given in full by guides, coach and taxi drivers every time this mammoth task was alluded to; often in the same paragraph or address.

A third of the 1.2 billion Chinese live by the Yangtze one twelfth of the world's population and many communities deposit waste into this, the second-longest river in the world.

However, the milk-chocolate hue of the water, I was assured, is caused by the large amount of silt it carries, and this is one of the considerations mentioned by those who question the wisdom of the project.

Flood control, improved transportation along this main thoroughfare and the production of 10 per cent of the nation's electricity are the main advantages and these are not to be taken lightly.

There have been one million victims of floods over the past 50 years a third of them fatalities and in 1993, repairing flood damage cost $10.8 billion for this great river, often ten times wider than the Thames, floods and causes destruction every summer.

The new dam will form a 300-mile lake and submerge 13 cities, 140 towns, 1,352 villages and, in the process, cover almost 700 factories with the resultant freeing of mercury and lead deposits. Then there are the temples and relics, which will be lost, perhaps forever.

The water will start rising some 175 metres above sea level next June, causing in excess of 1.3m Chinese to be relocated.

The cost of moving cities, towns and villages further up the mountains and hills alongside the river or relocating farmers far to the east, is mind boggling but, as exemplified by The Great Wall, China does not undertake things by halves.

Discussion on the subject was banned from public debate in 1987, but there are many in and outside the country who question not only its validity and viability but its ability to survive.

The landslides along the Yangtze are legion and China has seen 3,200 dams break since the "great liberation" of 1949 and this one, built to withstand seven on the Richter scale, has been sited on an earthquake fault line.

While some fear an apocalypse and others a festering silt-filled bog, the scale of the project is breathtaking.

We travelled some 280 miles up the Yangtze in four days and some of the scenes were as if it was still wartime and the Japanese had only just preceded us and had shelled every community by the river as jagged husks of buildings remained near the shoreline.

Markers in towns, and on hills and mountains, reminded you how much was to be submerged and wholesale demolition was already underway while you could see towering new apartment blocks and factories being built higher above the future waterline.

At times, when travelling through the lowlands, the width of the river had lake-like proportions, but later, upon reaching the gorges in pollution-shrouded sunshine, the river narrowed.

Despite the limitations of our visual horizons, the gorges are truly beautiful, steep sides carved by the river over millions of years.

But the fascination to me was of the human activity, firstly the countless boats, dhows, barges, sampans and transport ships ploughing their way up and down the river.

Then there the variety of work being undertaken, from wading fisherman scooping their way through the water with hooped nets of five-foot radius, to farmers tilling the soil on terraces etched into the steep-sided hills and mountains.

The cruise provided a panoply of poverty: people collecting pebbles from the side of the river, packing them in rucksacks and carting them up the mountains for reasons and destinations unknown.

Some were working with mules, living in what appeared to be single-roomed huts, with small allotments on the terraces the majority of them set to be displaced when the waters begin to rise next June.

We passed through one town, en route to an earlier dam, first thing in the morning. On each side of the river, at 8.00am, local inhabitants went through their exercises, tai chi and the like, on the bank or pavement before setting off for work, while, behind them, the demolition men were already tackling their daily tasks.

A young girl, standing on one leg, broke her concentration to send a Tarzan-like cry echoing across the river and then repeated the cry several times until we had passed, bringing an unreal almost mystical quality to the morning.

There was a kaleidoscope of such images but it did not matter if they were rich or poor, travelling on a tanker or chugging along, powered by a smoky outboard motor that had seen better days; or toiling amidst the coal reserves banked high above the river or just limbering up for the day they all seemed to have time to wave and smile.

Over the years I have heard about their inscrutable faces and perhaps, if so disposed, the Chinese would make good poker players, but throughout our trip we found them open, friendly, smiling, helpful and happy. They seemed like a people relieved at having emerged from the dark days of the government policy disasters labelled Collectivism, The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and are grateful for the fact that they are now living in New China amidst the New Spirit of Openness.

Twenty years ago, there were only government shops and rationing four kilos of cooking oil per year, for example whereas now, it seems, China is a nation of shopkeepers and farmers.

As foreigners, people would have avoided us 20 years ago, but now they speak happily and without fear the irony being that this New Openness is a result of what were for China the enlightened policies of Deng Xiaoping the man in charge during the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

Certainly people repeatedly told us they rejoiced in New Openness.

Our entry into the Three Gorges was preceded by our arrival at a spectacular lock at Gezhouba, where we rose some 60 feet before progressing up towards the beauty spot.

We were on board for four days, but each day we had an excursion. For the first one, we travelled by coach down some lamentable, potholed roads to climb a 2,000-year-old wooden tower at Yueyang.

The tower contained a poem written on the wall which was a particular favourite of Chairman Mao's, titled "Water, sky; same colour".

There is something about Mao that does not translate well.

"As Chairman Mao said," the guide informed us, as if imparting the secret of life itself: "No fish, no banquet."

Later, we were told, Mao once said the more chillies you eat, the greater revolutionary you will become. He was quoted time and time again.

One had the impression that if Mao had remarked to the effect there was no paper in the toilet, we would have been shown the loo where he 'famously inquired' : "Where the hell's the bog-roll?"

Or perhaps it would have been been poetically simplified: "No paper, no wipe."

The pollution, which limited our horizons, is due to the vast coal-burning industries and many of those inland are the result, in part, of Mao's Third Line policy. Concerned that the Yanks might be able to take out their main armaments industry with just one atom bomb on Shanghai, he decided to move the entire industrial base inland described as the equivalent of moving the whole of the current Silicon Valley into Montana of the 1880's. At one stage it took up 50 per cent of the annual budget.

Vast coal reserves are tipped from the road into compounds on the sloping banks of the Yangtze and from these, workers shovel the coal into open one-foot wide, rudimentary chutes, which send the coal pieces rattling down 100 yards into the barges below, the sound echoing round gorges and valleys.

On the second day, we travelled by coach to see the amazing Three Gorges Dam Project, driven to a vantage point to take in an excellent model of the area as well as the workings.

"I suppose the royal visitors have gone onto the dam itself," said Hyacinth Bouquet, ne Bucket, as we dubbed a lady of imperious manner, who we had met earlier.

"You mean you did not hear that commotion when the royal party came aboard last night?" she asked us.

"He is a senator from Kansas or something. They have taken over one end of the third deck.

"Mind you, I have driven though Kansas and it is the most boring state in America," she imparted dismissively.

On the boat were two, middle-aged American sisters sporting red hair "I see henna is in this year," said Hyacinth disparagingly.

They informed us the "royal" visitors were indeed the senator for Kansas plus the former majority leader during the Watergate hearings and the American Ambassador to China.

How come we were eating in the same restaurant and sleeping in the same moving hotel as the ambassador to China?

Travelling on the continent and opting for a pension here and an auberge there, I had never come across any of the world's decision-makers sharing the dining room and a bottle of the local plonk.

"Do you think we could have got a cheaper tour?" I asked my wife, with a smile.