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Yangtze River - 1995

Yangtze River - 1995

Jacek Pałkiewicz
2006-06-18 21:30:25

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on the opposite side of the gorge is a thick, round stone pillar, the Binding Dragon Pillar (Suolong Zhu). Once upon a time, the Jade Dragon, a son of the Dragon of the Eastern Sea, lived in a cave on the upper reaches of the Daixi Stream. One season he decided to visit his family by way of the Yangtze, but shortly afterwards found himself lost Changing into the form of an old man, he asked his way of a herds boy. The boy pointed north with his sickle. The dragon rushed off in that direction but again got lost, whereupon he flew into a mighty rage and rushed at the mountains, causing them to crumble and dam up the river; farmlands were flooded, earthquakes toppled houses, and men and animals perished. At this moment the Goddess Yao Ji rushed to the spot on a cloud. She rebuked Jade Dragon, but he was unrepentant. She flung a string of pearls into the air, it changed into a rope that bound the dragon to the stone pillar. Yao Ji then ordered the great Da Yu,controller of rivers, to behead the murderous dragon on the nearby platform. He then diverted the river by cutting the gorge. The people of this valley have lived happily ever since.

Two kilometres (1.2 miles) further, the Baozi Tan (a triple rapid) and the XiamaTan used to be serious dangers to shipping at low-water level. A traveller on one of the Yangtze steamships in the 1930s remarked: Only the throbbing of the engines as the bow entered the most turbulent part of the rapid, and buried its nose deep in the boiling water, revealed its presence to the uninitiated. But on looking back one could see that there had been a drop of two or three feet in the water where the rapid was most violent. Above it was a series of whirlpools and races.

Xiling Gorge
Xiling Gorge starts at Xiang Xi and zigzags for 76 kilometres (47 miles) down to Yichang . It is the longest and historically the most dangerous of the Yangtze gorges. Before the passage was made safe in the l950, 'the whole surface of ...