China-Yangtze River Cruise 4-14-13

The morning of April 14th we boarded smaller river boats and  headed up Longman Gorge which was formed by Shenong Stream.  The beautiful gorge is extremely deep and narrow.  A times it did not appear that the boat was going to fit between the sheer  cliff banks and that the side would be ripped out.  However, since I am writing this, obviously we made it.

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Longmen (Dragon Gate) Gorge  is the first gorge of Daning River 

After coming into the gorge, you can see the peaks on the both banks facing each other, and towering into sky; green mountains reflect on the limpid river. The cliffs in the gorge look like been cut by knife, the crack between the peaks look like been opened by god, and the shape looks like a gate.

Legend of Longmen Gorge  (in the unedited Chinese translation)

The stone gate named after “dragon” originated from a folk story. According to legend, there was a dragon wanted to pass through the cliff, come to Wu River and back to sea. When he reached here in night, he was found by the mountain god. The mountain god was angry with him, and pretended the cockcrow. When he heard the sound, he doubted that the morning is coming. So he quickly came back. When he wanted to go, his tail made a half-moon cave on the cliff. As his body is very strong, made three hundreds stone steps along the terrain. After came back to sea, he still wanted to pass through the cliff. He came here again. This time, he didn’t come to the mountain cliff, instead walking along the mountain valley and made a Zhufu River. When he came to Wu River, the great mountains blocked the valley. The dragon worked hard to dig the mountain and passed through the cave. At last, he came to Wu River and came back to sea.

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 This three kilometer long walkway was recently constructed
to replace the 50 km long plank walkway that was submerged by the 3 Gorge dam
backwater.

For more info about this walkway, click here.

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We also saw the famed “hanging Coffins of the Ba people.  From Wikipedia we find:

Hanging coffins are an ancient funeral custom of some minority groups, especially the Bo people of southern China. Coffins of various shapes were mostly carved from one whole piece of wood. Hanging coffins either lie on beams projecting outward from vertical faces such as mountains, are placed in caves in the face of cliffs, or sit on natural rock projections on mountain faces.

It was said that the hanging coffins could prevent bodies from being taken by beasts and also bless the soul eternally.
Our guide indicated that the higher up the cliff the coffin, the higher in rank or status the person was.

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Then we found a herd, or group or bunch or troop of locals, just monkeying around.

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The Chinese Coast Guard was keeping a close watch on things

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This gouge was so old that massive stalagmites have formed on the
walls.

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As e headed upstream from Longman Gorge to Fengdu for our afternoon tour we saw some interesting sights

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Farm land is at a premium so ever square meter is used.

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The Chinese seem to have a knack of building graceful
bridges.  I never saw what I would consider an ugly one.

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 Here you can see the great distance between full pool and low
pool.  Look for the red arrows.  Obviously we were there at low
pool.

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I was surprised to see this large Christian, probably Catholic,
church as we headed into Fengdu.  Research indicates that there are between
155-159 million Christians in China today.  That’s out of 1.3 billion total
population.

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