Well we have been on our China trip for 9 days now and wanted to really get to know the Chinese culture better, So we booked ourselves onto a cruise up the Yangtze River (well a basic boat tour to be more accurate) with a Chinese Tour Group! Being the only westerner's on board we received a lot of attention in the way of long stares. A few "Ni Hao's" (Hello's) slowly began to bring the group round to the idea that we were in fact friendly people! After a while they began to respond with "Hello" accompanied with a big smile. We had succeeded in our quest to win some of our travel companions over. The boat trip was very basic, but we were pleased to have a western toilet (as opposed to a squat toilet) with streamer style toilet roll in our room and a flask of hot water ready for our nutritious pot noodles! We set sail from Wanzhou Pier and continued down river. Our first stop was at the Zhangfei Temple which was bizarrley lit up with red neon strip lights. It wasn't quite the 'old meeting the new' that we had expected, but it did have
some original calligraphy wooden and slate plaques on display which allowed it to keep some of its authenticity. It commemorates Zhangfei, a distinguished General from the Three Kingdom Period. The next day, the internal bells on the boat rang at an unearthly hour of 6am to get all the passengers up to view the Qutang Gorge, the first, shortest and the grandest of the Three Gorges. We decided to just open the room curtains and stay in bed for this. At 8am, we arrived in Wushan city and were rounded up to take a small boat to visit the Little / Lesser Three Gorges. The scenery was beautiful and the trip was made even more enjoyable as a kind chinese man "Cheng" wanted to practice his English and translated some of the information for us. There were songs and laughter down the river and Andy didn't fail to entertain everyone by dressing up in the traditional costume for part of the journey! Cheng also helped to explain what some of the traditional street food was, so we started bartering for a few things - potatoes on a stick, baby cockerel on a stick and those sorts of things. Cheng
laughed as we managed to get them for less than he paid! Andy was quite daring in trying the baby cockerel, but didn't eat all the parts that the Chinese were eating. We returned to the larger boat to continue our journey past the second of the gorges 'Wu Gorge' with its famous high and misty peaks, and then onto the Xiling Gorges. Another beautiful day. It was another early start and we took an excursion to Jiuwan Stream on a traditional Dragon Boat which had a petrol powered outboard motor on it - again the old meeting the new! We had a boat all to ourselves as surprisingly Andy made us late as he was doing his hair! This was a lovely little stream where we walked across an inflatable walkway and up into the gorge cliff side. We then all sat down for a traditional Chinese play 'Ritual of the Soul' which was very colourful and involved lots of loud piercing singing. Other entertainment involved our travelling companions just standing up and leaving or just having loud conversations throughout the play. The last part of the Yangtze River Cruise tour was a trip round the Three Gorges Dam which was very wide and apparently produces trillions of watts of power each year!! Then we disembarked in Yichang, and flew to Shanghai for the World Expo, and Hangzhou and Suzhou.There was a man on board who had an England jacket on whom we asked to have our photo taken with. He was quite a shy man, but was very flattered to have been picked out by us for a photo and after this he always made a point to say "Hello" to us when ever he saw us. By the end of the tour, we felt like celebrities! We lost count of the number of photo's that had been taken of us, but that made it an even more fun journey.
some original calligraphy wooden and slate plaques on display which allowed it to keep some of its authenticity. It commemorates Zhangfei, a distinguished General from the Three Kingdom Period. The next day, the internal bells on the boat rang at an unearthly hour of 6am to get all the passengers up to view the Qutang Gorge, the first, shortest and the grandest of the Three Gorges. We decided to just open the room curtains and stay in bed for this. At 8am, we arrived in Wushan city and were rounded up to take a small boat to visit the Little / Lesser Three Gorges. The scenery was beautiful and the trip was made even more enjoyable as a kind chinese man "Cheng" wanted to practice his English and translated some of the information for us. There were songs and laughter down the river and Andy didn't fail to entertain everyone by dressing up in the traditional costume for part of the journey! Cheng also helped to explain what some of the traditional street food was, so we started bartering for a few things - potatoes on a stick, baby cockerel on a stick and those sorts of things. Cheng
laughed as we managed to get them for less than he paid! Andy was quite daring in trying the baby cockerel, but didn't eat all the parts that the Chinese were eating. We returned to the larger boat to continue our journey past the second of the gorges 'Wu Gorge' with its famous high and misty peaks, and then onto the Xiling Gorges. Another beautiful day. It was another early start and we took an excursion to Jiuwan Stream on a traditional Dragon Boat which had a petrol powered outboard motor on it - again the old meeting the new! We had a boat all to ourselves as surprisingly Andy made us late as he was doing his hair! This was a lovely little stream where we walked across an inflatable walkway and up into the gorge cliff side. We then all sat down for a traditional Chinese play 'Ritual of the Soul' which was very colourful and involved lots of loud piercing singing. Other entertainment involved our travelling companions just standing up and leaving or just having loud conversations throughout the play. The last part of the Yangtze River Cruise tour was a trip round the Three Gorges Dam which was very wide and apparently produces trillions of watts of power each year!! Then we disembarked in Yichang, and flew to Shanghai for the World Expo, and Hangzhou and Suzhou.There was a man on board who had an England jacket on whom we asked to have our photo taken with. He was quite a shy man, but was very flattered to have been picked out by us for a photo and after this he always made a point to say "Hello" to us when ever he saw us. By the end of the tour, we felt like celebrities! We lost count of the number of photo's that had been taken of us, but that made it an even more fun journey.
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