The Three Gorges were so named from the late Han dynastic period (23 – 220 AD). This nomenclature groups into a set of three the numerous shoals and gorges of the Yangzi river between Wanxian and Yichang. The Three Gorges are the Qutang Gorge (8km long), the Wuxia Gorge (45km long) and the Xilong (66km long) Gorge.
The gorges are as fabled today as they have been throughout the past two millennia. Countless poets have written of the gorges’ beauty and treachery, while historians, captivated by the narration of the fictive Romance of the Three Kingdoms and other historical yarns, have designated exact positions of celebrity along its steep cliffs. Despite events tumultuous as the demise of the great General Liu Bei at Baidicheng, or as devastating to deep trenches as the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, the waters of the mighty Yangzi continue to flow indifferent to the affairs of mortals while local memory lapses into the canons of legend.
Legend applies significance to stone features that might have otherwise served as signposts for travelers punctuating the journey and renouncing the timeless water, while the linear nature of passage through the gorges provides today’s travelers a window into the country’s obsession with its own mystic heritage. “Hanging Monk Rock,” “Drinking Phoenix Spring,” “Wise Grandmother’s Spring,” “Rhinoceros Looking at the Moon,” “Beheading Dragon Platform,” and “Binding Dragon Pillar” are but a few of the monuments along the Three Gorges. Do not despair if you can’t distinguish the dragon from the cliff, instead, think of the multitude of rock formations named of grandeur as bookmarks in a narrative that defines the creation and oral history of the region.
Sailing through the Three Gorges generally requires a commitment of three days and nights, and most leisure ships departing from Chongqing will include occasional side trips along the way.
Visitors are first introduced to Baidicheng, or White Emperor City, and its current namesake owes to a Sichuan province official, Gong Sunshu. In 25AD, Gong spotted a white mist in the shape of a dragon emanating from a local well, and, in an un-rare move, proclaimed himself the White Emperor while correspondingly naming the town in his glory. Locals constructed a temple at Baidicheng to commemorate Shu, but nearly 1,500 years later it was replaced by a Ming Dynasty governor and renamed the “Three Merits Temple,” only to be replaced again by statutes of Three Kingdoms protagonists Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei and renamed “Righteous Shrine.” In another 1,500 years, it is unclear who might reside in the Righteous Shrine, if indeed it will still be called such…
Qutang Gorge
Lu You, a scholar of the Southern Song dynasty (1120 – 1279), goes into greater detail as he describes his descent:
"Entering the Qutang Gorge, I saw two rocky walls rising into the clouds and facing each other across the river. They were as smooth as if they had been cut with an axe. I raised my head and looked up. The sky was like a narrow waterfall. But there was no water falling down. The river in the gorge was as smooth as shining oil."
From "Record on Going into Sichuan" by Lu You (1170)
For thousands of years, the Qutang Gorge proved too unruly for travelers to pass without caution: at the narrowest stretches, peaks up to 4,000 feet were whittled by a river that passed only 500 feet wide. Locals during the Tang and Song dynasties constructed systems of suspended iron chains to control transit through the raging waters. Although the Qutang Gorge no longer provides such a menacing passage after the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, one can still infer the magnitude of the risk involved to traverse this gauntlet in days past.
The most celebrated feature at Qutang Gorge is known as “Meng Liang’s Staircase,” a series of deep holes evenly spaced and oddly quarried into the sheer cliff without connection at either top or bottom. Legend holds that a general in the historical novel Yang Family Generals, sought to recover the remains of General Yang Jiye located at the top of the mountain by secretly chiseling a pathway up the sheer cliff to Yang’s grave. Versions of the myth diverge, but a local monk, by chance or by duplicity, crowed like a rooster signaling the coming morning and caused Meng Liang to resign his endeavor. Infuriated by his failure, Meng Liang later gratified his ego by seizing and hanging the monk from a nearby cliff. Romance aside, archaeologists have instead identified Meng Liang’s Staircase near the site of an ancient town, and residents used it in conjunction with a series of rope-ladders to scale the cliff.
Wuxia Gorge
The character "Wu" refers to a shaman. This gorge was so called after an imperial physician called Wu Xian who lived during the time of King Yao. Wushan begins the second set of gorges, Wuxia; 45km of fantastic precipices. Don’t be alarmed if you find yourself in a sea of local tourists pursuing Wuxia’s glory: the area’s reputation has attracted countless masses for millennia.
A side trip up Danning Stream takes you through the picturesqe Lesser Three Gorges (see the photo above). Towards the end, high up on cliff are hanging coffins . A burial custom of the Ba people, dating back over 2,000 years, they resemble other cliffside coffins found in Gongxian near Yibin. These hanging coffins are said to date back to the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644). No one is sure how or why this custom came about, however the Ba people – no longer surviving – were known for other perverse behavior, such as that of protesting heaven. One such protest, for example, took the form of wearing too many clothes in summer and too few in winter.
Xiling Gorge
On the approach to Xiling, the longest and traditionally most treacherous of the Three Gorges, visitors will pass the birthplace of the 3rd century BC poet, scholar, and official Qu Yuan. Loved by many during his time, Qu was dejected from office by an imbecile king of the Chu culture. Upon learning that the Chu culture was conquered by king Ying of the Qin (who later united all of China as the country’s first emperor), poet-statesman Qu drowned himself in a tributary of the Yangzi. To commemorate Qu Yuan, his subjects fed his spirit by dumping sticky rice wrapped and cooked in leaves. For over 2,000 years have proudly commemorated Qu Yuan with an annual dragon boat festival, even if they no longer dump zongzi into rivers across the country and rather chose to ingest the delectable morsels themselves.
"The Xintan Shoal" by Su Shi (Song dynasty)
"Our flat boat skirts the winding mountains;
Astonished we are by the approaching scenery.
The white waves surge across the river,
Rising and falling like snow descending from the sky.
Each wave being higher than the preceding one,
All fall onto the depressed riverbed.
Small fish disperse and then assemble,
Appearing and disappearing as if in boiling water.
The cormorants dare not dive into the river,
They one fly across it, flapping their light wings.
The egrets wade in the shallows, slim and agile,
But sometimes they cannot stand steady.
As for people aboard the small boat,
No one dares display poor oarsmanship.
To the temple shore they go to pray for safety."
Fortunately, with the completion of the Three Gorges Dam downstream, Xiling Gorge today bears little resemblance to the words of Su Shi and one no longer must worry about his life crashing abruptly in the turbulent waters. Passage through the Xiling Gorge heralds the end of the journey before the river widens and waters become paralyzed by the Three Gorges Dam in Yichang.
The Geological Formation Of The Three Gorges
During the Triassic period, some 200 million years ago the Mediterranean Sea flowed as far east as the Yangzi River valley. When the Indochina orogenic (mountain forming) movement occurred, the western land mass fell and the Mediterranean Sea receded. Simultaneously, as the Qingling Mountains rose in central China, a system of lakes and rivers developed in the Yangzi River valley, flowing westwards to the Mediterranean. 130 million years later, the Yangshan movement took place, by which the limestone-based Sichuan Basin and Three Gorges area rose to their current location. As a result of this occurrence, it is possible in the area to find at 1000 meters altitude, pebbles and rocks belonging to lake bottoms of this past geological period.
The Himalayan orogenic movement, which followed 30 million years later (and which continue to raise the Three Gorges by 2-4 millimeters per year), gave rise to dramatic changes west of the Three Gorges: vertiginous mountains, high plateaux and deep valleys formed. At this time, two rivers flowed from a large lake in the Three Gorges area; one to the west and another to the east. Because the altitude drop in the eastern river was much greater than the one in the west, and hence its rate of erosion faster, when the two rivers eventually met to cut a precarious path through the Three Gorges, the resultant river flowed eastwards.
Effect Of The Three Gorges Dam
Since The Three Gorges are much taller than the total planned water level increase of 80 meters, they will never be submerged by the reservoir. They will however, appear to be 80 meters lower and therefore not as dramatic as they are now. Indeed, visitors should bear in mind that after the Gezhouba Dam project, completed in 1988, the water level in The Three Gorges rose by 10 meters.
