We took a three-night trip down the Yangtze on the East Queen cruise ship. The day before we left, Alison took several pictures, which we then cobbled together horribly to present to you this somewhat poor panorama view (scroll right to see the whole thing).
The Yangtze is very wide here, as you can see, and we're still 2400 km from the sea. The water level will eventually rise to the half way point on the giant staircase shown here.
Our ship left in the middle of the first night for some reason, so technically, while we slept on board three nights, only 2.5 of the nights were actually during the cruise. Here's another ship going by as we move down the river the next day.
Cielo's favorite thing on board was the daily Tai Ji exercises. Here she is doing some from the sun deck while the class goes on one level down.
It's hard to really comprehend how high the water will rise due to the dam project. We kept seeing rocks and cliffs marked with the coming water level, like this one, and here it doesn't begin to show how much it's going to rise.
On board, Granddad taught Cielo the "Here is the church, here is the steeple" game you do with your hands. Cielo likes to point at each finger and say who it is - Mama, Daddy, Granddad, Nana, etc. She also thinks when the people go away, they are in Granddad's pocket.
One night, after visiting Shibaozai, we (bizarrely) were supposed to dress as pirates for dinner. The crew were nicely dressed up, but all we had were a couple of bandannas. Cielo makes an excellent pirate, at least.
Cielo enjoyed running around on the deck. Here she is on the sun deck, doing "ring a' rosie" around some supports.
As advertised, here is a shot of one of the Three Gorges from our ship. As you can see, there were plenty of Westerners on our ship (and plenty of "domestic tourists" from all around China, too).
And another nice shot in the reverse direction.
