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Yangtze River - 1995
Yangtze River - 1995
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-18 21:30:25
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over by l00 or more trackers. Passengers would join their boat beyond the rapid after walking along a wandering mountain track and passing through the village of Xintan, once the site of the White Bone Pagoda giant pile of bleached bones, which was all that survived of the many thousands who had lost their lives at this frightening place. In l941 the steamboat Minxi came to grief and several hundred people perished. The swift current carried boats downriver through Xin Tan at the rate of 7 metres (30 feet) per second.
In 1854 a local merchant collected subscriptions from river traders and built three life-saving craft to patrol this rapid, and to salvage boats and survivors. This was the beginning of the Yangtze River Lifeboat Office, which eventually maintained its Redcoats on all the danger spots along the Chongqing-Yichang stretch until the 1940s. The channel winds east and then south, towards Ox Liver and Horse Lungs Gorge, apparently. named after the yellow stalactite formations on the north side. One of the 'Horse's Lungs' is missing, blown up by British gunboats during the reign of Guangxu (1875--l908).
In the middle stretch of Xiling Gorge, the strangely lovely Kongling Gorge towers above the iron-green rocks of the 2.5-kilometre (1.5--mile) long Kongling Tan, the worst of all the Yangtze rapids. Seventeen catastrophes involving steamships occurred here between l900 and l945. The larger boulders choking the channel had names such as 'Big Pearl', 'Monk's Rock' and 'Chickens' Wings', but the deadliest of all was known as 'Come to Me’.
As the boat enters Yellow Ox Gorge (Huangniu Xia)--said to look like a man riding an ox the passage widens out and sweeps under the ancient Huangling Temple (Huangling Miao) on the south face, nestling amid orange and pomelo trees. The great poet Du Fu wrote of his journey through this gorge :
Three dawns shine upon the Yellow Ox.
Three
...
See photographs from:
China Gallery
