On board a rickety, grubby old bus from the Three Gorges Dam to the down river city of Wuhan, we have just spent the last four days enjoying the scenic Yangzi River from a Chinese domestic tourist boat. Out of the 400+ passengers, only 5 were of Anglo-Saxon appearance, and due to our apparent poor Chinese skills, we were buddied up with a French couple in a tiny four-bed dorm. With the help of some strong rice wine and a few games of mahjong, we were soon speaking in an odd mix of French, Chinese and English together.

The boat stopped at a few places along the way from Chongqing to Taipingi, all teeming with fishermen selling their latest catch and the usual crappy plastic souvenirs. We happily listened to tour guides making jokes in Mandarin that we didn't understand, had a good look around and tried to get creative with the camera.

Our first stop was the Ghost City at Fengdu, which would have been especially interesting if we understood our guide... Nevertheless, a deserted town filled with various nightmarish statues on a misty morning allows you to be pretty creative. The walls were covered with gruesome, stomach-curdling images of torture and the netherworld. Check out our photo album if you don't believe.. scary stuff!

The three gorges themselves were magnificent, and it was hard to imagine that they would have been more than twice the height only ten years ago, before the construction of the three gorges dam.

The best of these sites was without a doubt Jiuwan stream, a small and narrow gorge which linked up with the Yangzi. We were herded into traditional-looking wooden dragon boats equipped with very out-of-character petrol powered motors, and propelled towards a floating boardwalk which led to a track along the side of the gorge. After a nice early morning stroll, we watched a show with traditional dancing and opera, performed on a floating stage! This was even more enjoyable due to the fact that we weren't expecting it at all.

Probably the most memorable part of the trip was hanging out with all the curious Chinese kids. We decided to teach a couple of kids to play 'snap' and soon had half a dozen itching to get in on the new game. We were starting to regret this decision when Geoffrey and Emilina, the french couple, distracted their attention by drawing pictures for the kids to colour in. A particularly curious 11 year old, Xiejinkun, decided to befriend us and continued to burst into our dorm throughout the cruise to practice his english and laugh at our strange laowai habits.

Eventually we hopped off the boat and were taken for a tour of the enormous three gorges dam, apparently with a hydroelectric production capacity equivalent to 18 nuclear power plants! The effect of the dam on the river was amazing, not to mention devastating. Upstream the water level had risen to engulf whole cities and displace millions of people. Downstream, previously beautiful riverside parks were now separated from the Yangzi by up to 50m of ugly exposed sloping concrete riverbed. Seemingly more of an industry than a natural landform, we were glad to see the original Yangzi river preserved by art in a small gallery not far from the dam itself..