OUR STURDY YANGTZE RIVER SAILING VESSEL.
BUYING FRUIT ON SHORE FROM THE LOCALS AT ONE OF OUR STOPS.
Spending an entire day (or two) on a Chinese passenger-focused cruising vessel plying the Yangtze with 20 other Champ Mojo’ers is not nearly as romantic an experience as you might imagine.
Insert laugh track here.
But I will say that our Champ China Mojo travelers made the most of this leg of our adventure.
The big disappointment?
We didn’t get to actually witness the Three Gorges Dam project itself, as we passed through the locks on the late night side of the trip.
But there was much to like about the cruise.
The on-board food was surprisingly delicious.
An aside - our Chinese passengers ate so quickly that the eating area at ship’s stern was vacated in minutes after every meal, leaving us alone and laughing with our steamed buns, rice, and veggie/meat plates.
A YANGTZE FJORD CAVE, ONE OF MANY NATURAL WONDERS ALONG THE WAY.
The views proved spectacular - think Norwegian fjords without the snow and with more of China’s famed smog, but with stunning rock formations and the occasional monkey.
We took two side trips of note, as well.
TU JIA 5 PERSON FARMER/PADDLER TEAMS WITH THEIR PEA POD BOATS.
The first found us on a smaller boat steaming up the Yangtze to a smaller tributary called the Shennongxi River and a floating mini-harbor, where we boarded wooden Pea Pod boats in groups of 18 travelers, paddled by teams of 5 Tu Jia farmers who moonlighted as oarsmen. Our friendly and knowledgable Tu Tia tour guide, Amanda, told us that the Tu Jia people, 8 million strong in this area of China, comprise one of China’s 56 ethnic minority groups. Because they have lived and farmed up high in the fjords of western Hubei, the extensive displacement wrought by the building of the massive Three Gorges Dam project has not impacted their villages and people, in the same way that it has displaced 10s of thousands of other lower lying villagers living down low in the path of the dam-created new flood patterns.
In fact, it seems like the Tu Jia are doing just fine, buoyed by a burgeoning new tourist economy they’ve built on China’s emerging prosperity. At the height of tourist season, from April through October, they run 2,000 paddlers and 150 boats, with each group of 5 spending 5000 RMB on a Pea Pod, and splitting the profits for the paddling they do for tourists.
Another of China’s paradoxes.
THE YANGTZE, AS SEEN FROM THE TEMPLE OF THE WHITE EMPEROR.
In the afternoon, we disembarked at White Emperor City for a hike to the top of a beautiful temple and pagoda area. This place figured prominently in the Era of the Three Warring States.
MOJO YOGA ON THE YANGTZE.
MOJO CHILLIN' ON THE YANGTZE.
MOJO SCRABBLE ON THE YANGTZE (C0-PILOT KAT WAS BARELY VICTORIOUS.)
The best part of the cruise, though, for me, was the Champ chill time we all enjoyed together on the boat. Talking, photo shoots, reading, cards, Scrabble, yoga, and even the glimmerings of a spontaneous dance party on board the Lido Deck – all great vehicles for us to get to know our group a bit better.
MOJO THE MORNING WE DISEMBARKED FROM THE YANGTZE.
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