A Dam Fine Outing

They really kept us hopping on the first day.  The second shore excursion for the day was to the visitor’s center at the Three Gorges Dam Project.

By one measure, it is the world’s largest power station by installed capacity.  By another measure, it has been surpassed by a South American dam.  The dam was controversial when built, as both environmentalists and archaeologists were critical.  Millions of people had to be relocated.  The flip side is, hydroelectric is clean energy and it works well for flood control.

A dam was originally envisioned in 1919 by Sun Yat-Sen, and then the Chinese Nationalists enlisted US help for planning.  World War II put that on hold, and then the Maoist revolution further put it on hold.  After much discussion in the 1950s, the project began in 1994.  The dam was fully operational in 2012, although the locks did not open till later.

It takes twelve hours to go through the locks, but ships have to wait 48 hours to enter.  They are building two more sets of locks to cut down on the waiting time.  No idea when that project will be finished, but it will be a while!

It was kind of weird, as the bus ride did not take an hour!  First we got off the bus, went into a building, through security, then back out of the building and onto the bus again.  Then the bus wound its’ way up the hill to the visitor’s center.  A quick visit to that, where we saw a scale model of the dam (pictured below).

Then we took the escalator up to the vantage point, saving ourselves 400 knee-crushing steps.  It was interesting to see the locks, especially as a car carrying barge went through.  The vantage point for the dam was not as good, but I suppose you need to be on the water to get a great look at the dam.

After spending some time wandering around the vantage point, including walking up to the very top view, we headed back down the hill to get a closer look at the dam (from the side, obviously).  I bought some bad Chinese ice cream at a shop.  China does not lack for food options at tourist sites, although Carol and I are keeping to our vow of no street food!  (Hey, it worked in Myanmar, and it is working here).