RIP

Fri. 11:30 am.
The scenery of the lesser three gorges is difficult to capture with a camera, but I suppose that mountains often are.  The scale simply does not translate through the average point and shoot lens.  But that hasn't stopped me and most of the other members of my group from trying.  We jostle for position along the railings.  Plenty of people have professional looking SLRs with long lenses.

As we snap away at a coffin resting in a carved out opening in the cliff face, I am thinking about the 100 meters of cliff that is submerged under this dam created lake.  How and why did coffins come to be in such an inaccessible spot? There are theories but no once seems to know.

The Chinese government relocated 1.3 million people before they dammed the Yangtze. Our boat guide tells
us about her families living conditions before and after the move; her parents now have an indoor toilet but the pebble beach where she and her friends used to play is gone.  For the farmers, the government pre terraced the mountain sides and relocated topsoil.

We see a few monkeys climbing a cliff face and the boats that come twice a week to feed them. A white crane flies past.  Our guide says there are 100 species of fish in the water.  But it seems too quiet, no bugs, no circling birds, no squirrels, though there is bamboo and tea trees.

Though it is beautiful with the foliage turning to its winter red, I think, "it would take a government enforced relocation program for me to want to live here."