By breakfast this morning we were already through the locks and waiting to leave the ship to tour the Three Gorges Dam. Construction of the main dam began in 1997 and the final turbine went online July 1, this year. The only remaining task is the completion of the ship lift that should be completed in 2014. There is a lot of information available about the dam, so I won't repeat it here, other than to say above the dam the water level is at 175 meters and below it only 80. It was a huge and controversial undertaking that is viewed as a great success by the Chinese, but only time will tell whether the positive outweighs the negative in terms of environmental impact, and economic impact.

One of the major problems is the accumulation of silt behind the dam and in the locks . Earlier this year the locks were closed for 45 days and next year they may be shut down for as long as 11 months to clean out the accumulated silt. When the locks are closed the cruise boats stop above the dam and this may have a huge impact on tourism, especially for the towns located below the dam. If they were to close only one set of locks at a time, the project might take 5 years to complete.

After visiting the dam we continued down river to Yichang. This part of the river, retains much of its pre-dam character, with much lower water levels and more agriculture and small villages along the shoreline. However, tourism is thriving even here, and we passed several resorts under construction. After leaving the ship, we boarded a bus for the 5 hour trip to Wuhan where we spent the night before an early morning flight to Hong Kong.